


Unforeseen Sweetness

by wanderingquill



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Awkwardness, Comedy, F/F, F/M, Gen, Slow Burn, munchies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-10-17 18:06:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 40,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10599354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderingquill/pseuds/wanderingquill
Summary: President Seraphina needs a plus one arm candy for a week of charity events, Percy plays matchmaker, Tina's keeps stealing from the wand's departments snack stash and Abernathy is just trying to do his job and not get fired and maybe bake some cupcakes for his coworkers.





	1. Match Making and Snack stealing

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first large scale fanfiction, it's a bit weird but it will make you laugh. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I did writing it.
> 
> ali~ is my beta and she is amazing for putting up with my horrendous grammar.
> 
> Please comment if you have the time.

**Unforeseen Sweetness**

"I just want you to find someone who makes you happy, honey."

"I am the president of the country. I have negative amount of time to myself, mother."

"I don't mean it like that, and you know it. I know you're a busy woman and sometimes need to put work ahead of yourself. But work will always be there.”

“Mother, please…" Seraphina tried to convince her mother she was fine, having endured this exact conversation multiple times before.

"I just don't want you to forget to actually live your own life."

"I’m working, mother. I have to deal with hundreds of different world leaders, ambassadors, dignitaries, senators, union leaders and even no-maj leaders. All while trying to dealing with conflicts in the Senate, daily paperwork, and the vultures in the press.”

"Yes. But when you aren’t dealing with all that, you're hiding at your brother Percy's place. You two hiding and drinking his good wine while talking plots and secrets. You can’t find love with Percy. If you two could be a couple, I’d be a grandmother already."

"…….." Seraphina’s grip on the phone tightened into a clenched fist as the silence clung like a heavy quilt, soft but suffocating.

"You know I am not wrong, and now you’re feeling grummy about it."

"I have a security meeting to get to in five minutes." Seraphina leaned back in her chair, rubbing her temples to fight off a stress headache.

“Fine, dodge my good intentions and truths. But they’re still gonna be true when you hang up this phone. And just at least let the idea of finding someone not sound like an insane thing. Love you, Sera. Send Percy my love.”

Seraphina sighed. The hopeful lilt in her mother’s voice stung like needles. She responded in an exhausted voice, " I'll try, mother. Love you, too. Bye.”

Seraphina could barely stand to look at her phone after talking to  her mother about the same old “concerns” for the hundredth time since she was elected. After staring at it for a moment, she  swiftly leviosa’d her no-maj phone into the fish tank. 

Percy walked in to see the black phone being poked at by her koi fish in the wall tank."So how's Mama Picquery?" he asked with barely hidden glee.

Seraphina looked like she was trying to tap her way through the cream colored rug with the repetition of her aggravated foot.

"Peachy. Just peachy,” Seraphina  stated through a clenched jaw, as she read the daily reports.

"Ah, the ‘I just want you to be happy’ guilt trip,” Percival stated with a smirk , then  as he strutted towards her maple desk and circled behind it, continued, “Classic, simple, rooted in love, and indefensible against. Your mother's favorite kind of argument."

Percival half leaned around the curved side of the oval desk as he got closer to his closest friend and boss. The complete and almost Spartan-like precision of the papers around her might as well have been neon signs for ‘I am stressed, back off,’ given how Seraphina normally thrived in organized chaos.

"Percy,” Seraphina responded as she gripped her wand so hard it almost cracked the handle.

"What, peanut?" Percival quipped to his very dear and aggravated friend.

"Please shut up before I apparate you into the fish tank with my phone.”

“I will leave in a moment, I’m just here to drop off the message meant for you. The original messenger was too scared to hand this to you while you were on the phone with your mother. A valid fear for anyone, given how phone calls for you are almost never good news.”

“Very funny, Percy, just give me my damn mail,” Seraphina snapped as she snatched the stack of paper from Percival’s hands.

“Yes, President Peanut,” he quipped as he watched her shuffle through the dense pile of letters. Percival quickly and quietly got off her desk, then steadily put some distance between him and his dearest friend. Because Percival knew that the dreaded letter was due to arrive, and it was not  going to be a pretty sight to see the president when she received a new source of stress, especially when she already felt antagonized from one of her mother’s talks.

“I’ll leave you to your mail, Sera," Percival softly said as he inched towards the door.

Seraphina sighed before she spoke. “Sorry. Thank you for bringing me my mail, Percy.”

“It was no problem. I’ll just step outside for a moment as you read.”

Percival exited her office but didn’t close the door and started counting outside her line of fire.

"One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi, four Mississippi, five Mississippi"-

Sure enough, by the the tenth Mississippi, a muffled, frustrated voice rumbled from the oval office and into the hallway.

"And she found the invite for the conference.”

"Percy, I can still very much hear you outside my door," Seraphina replied.

"I know, you were supposed too. I only came outside so you can't apparate me into your fish's Atlantis castle," Percival stated as he leaned in through the forest green doorway, keeping his body covered with the ivy green door paneling.

“Fuck you, Percy.”  
“Not likely, peanut.”

“ _Augh_ ," Seraphina groaned as she leaned into her arms on her desk, hiding her face."I’m in no mood for this, Percy," Seraphina muttered.

Percy replied, "I'm guessing by the noise of aggravation you made, peanut, I should cancel the security meeting today."

" _Yes_. If anyone needs me, don’t need me. I'm taking a rage nap. Please lock the door."

“Yes, peanut," Percival whispered as he locked the dark door behind him and cast a mild silence spell on the doors to keep things quiet for a while.

~

”Tina, the meeting has been cancelled. See to it that the other aurors know. I have to finish an assignment for the president, and it’s too late to send memos.”

“Yes, Mr. Graves. Good luck with whatever you’re doing for Madam Picquery.”

“Thank you.”

After shuffling into his office, Percival merely sank into his new, soft, leather couch and summoned his old black book.

“So, let’s play the game of finding Sera a back-up plus one for the schmoozers conference.” Percival gave internal commentary to himself as he quietly read through the long list of names.

“No, no, hell no. Gay. Married. Married. Asexual, and an asshole. Gay. This guy could lose an argument with a wall _. No_ . Married. Died in a knife fight. Married. Married. Old as balls, but looks younger than Sera _,_ so no on principle, and _ew_. Dead.” The further Percival read down the list, the worse the options became, and the tighter his lips got in aggravation.

"Gay. Gay and married. Might be a vampire, or a closet gay man. Bisexual but picky, engaged, straight, but will fuck anything with a pulse and willing consent. Married. Nice, but dull and not pretty enough to be worth it. Dead, dead, married. Barely still alive and married. Fucking hell. Why are all the decent men I know either dead or gay or married, and the assholes refuse to die? ...That's a question for another day.

“Who do I know who knows how to find people?” Percival asked himself as he leaned back in the seat and stared out the upper wall windows.

Tina was the perfect choice if he needed someone to punch somebody, to chase a perp down the street in heels, or to otherwise raise hell. But to locate a guy to be Sera’s arm candy? Hell no.

Queenie, on the other hand, knew the the juiciest scuttlebutt about everyone and everything.

Upon deciding on this form of action, Percival hid his black book behind one of the trinkets he got while traveling abroad his senior year at Ilvermorny. Percival exited his office, set up his new locks, and paced past the bullpens for his aurors, past the mediocre snack machines and enchanted giggle water fountains, and towards the gilded elevators. Luckily, the elevator stopped to let a couple interns with files out, so Percival didn’t have to waste a second waiting.

“Wand Permits office, please, Red.” Percival nodded at Red as he stepped into the elevator.

“Yes, Director Graves.”

“Thanks, Red.”

Red shuffled his feet as the soft sounds of the elevator gears broke the tense silence.

“That Frank Costello is toeing the line, ain’t he?” Red stated, trying to break the awkward silence.

“Hm? The gangster squib? What’d he supposedly do this time?”

“Okay, get this. You know those weird machines he got the no-majs hooked on?”

“Slots? Yeah. Technically they aren’t magical, so we couldn’t bust him for breaking Rappaport’s Law.”

“Apparently the no-maj mayor is on a slots hunt. Demanded their commissioner shut ‘em all down. Word on the street is that Costello used transfiguration to make his slots into vending machines for sugar packets. The no-maj police commissioner blew a gasket when he realized his raids were a total bust.”

“Sounds like something Mr. Costello would do, but we’ll have to wait for our informants to come forward with a machine to start an investigation.”

“Here’s hoping. And wouldn’t you know it, here we are, Director.”

“Thank you, Red. I’ll be sure to put in a good word for you in accounting once the holiday’s start.”

“Bless you, sir. God knows I listen to enough blather in a day for a lifetime.”

Percival strutted past dozens of work desks, ignoring the gasps and squeaky “Hello, Directors” as he made his way towards Queenie’s desk. He saw Queenie coming back from the lounge with a stack of mailed in forms.

“Queenie. Can I have a word?”

“Of course, Mr. Graves.”

Percival cast a notice-me not-charm around the work desk before he asked for help."I need a straight-laced workaholic who likes intimidating blondes, you know anyone?"

”Yes, God yes.”

Percival flinched as Queenie chucked her files onto her desk.

“The guy you want is driving me up the bloody wall with his work habits. He’s a great person, but even by MACUSA standards, he’s threadbare overworked." As Queenie divulged information about her boss and his habits, she remembered how Abernathy had spent his last Friday night.

_She had stopped by Jacob’s bakery that morning and gotten to work late. It was well after dark, and she finally finished the huge influx of Ilvermorny wand registration forms for the early admissions. She got up from her desk then, and saw the only light still on on the whole floor was coming from Abernathy’s office. She tiptoed across the marble floors to see if she needed to turn off the last light. As she peered in, she saw her boss still burning the figurative midnight oil at 10 PM.  "Staying late again, Abernathy?" Queenie inquired as she stood at the office doorway._

_"…Yes, Queenie,” Abernathy mumbled, barely looking up in response._

_‘He looks like he hasn’t left his desk in a week,’ Queenie thought to herself._

_His suit was as clean and pristine as it ever was, but his face was that of an unkempt soldier. Copper brown scruff had grown in uneven patches along his jaw. His youthful features conflicted with the yellowing of the skin around his eyes. He was like a newly bound tome that had already begun to age. Abernathy merely ignored Queenie’s stare and continued his motions of sorting out a stockpile of files._ _”_ _I'm just refiling all the things your sister mucked up when she was working in this department.”_

_"She returned to the auror’s department over a month ago, sir,” Queenie replied._

_"_ I know _. It's taken me this long to figure out her insane personal filing system of chaos and half written notes. It is literally easier to translate ancient dragon runes then it is to_ read your sister’s bloody handwriting! _!” Abernathy exclaimed as he waved a document with coffee stains and frantic ink blots where signatures should be._

_“I’ll be sure to ask Tina to come down at some point to help...translate her writing. But you should go home soon, sir.”_

_“Thank you for your concern. I’ll take that into consideration after I finish the first month of your sister’s filing.”_

 

Queenie felt like she was working with a piano with over tightened wires and an open lid. An unsettled, strained mind, playing frantically, trying to play a calm melody until all the strings snapped from tension and overuse. The tension she heard from Abernathy’s mind usually ebbed and flowed, good one day, horrible the next. But it had been over two consecutive weeks of horrendous strain for Abernathy, which was just maddening and terrifying to be in earshot of.

If Abernathy didn’t find an outlet soon, she was going to request the medical board force him to take a mental health vacation. For his sake as well as her own.

“Queenie? You still there?” Percival inquired as Queenie’s eyes glazed over. The far away look in her eyes and the tilt of her head shadowed by the shaky electric lights made her seem like she was modeling for a dime store pulp fiction cover.

"Sorry, I just got lost in thought. Does your person like Scottish accents? Or baked goods?"

“Maybe. Does your guy know the difference between a salad fork and course fork?”

“Pretty sure. Abernathy taught Tina the difference when she went undercover, and he was the only one we know who had a history of dealing with people from old money.”

“Good. Make sure he he’s free next month, and owl me when you figure out when he’s gonna be working overtime. I’ll set up the next part to get him in the line of sight for my friend when she’s looking for a date for the conference week.”

“Good plan. Try to make them think it was their idea to ask the other out. But Mr. Graves, it might help me prep Abernathy more if you told me who you wanted to set him up with?" Queenie for once felt out of the loop. She couldn’t focus on Percival directly without triggering the new safety wards he set up after Gellert. And the only thing she could pilfer from the surface of his thoughts was a weird catalogue of men with red or black ‘x’s on their faces and names.

“I’ll give you more details about who and where after I set things in motion.” As Percival started to head towards the elevator, Queenie followed to see him off.

Percival asked as they waited for the elevator “If you can, and for the love of God, get the gunk out of his hair before he shows up. You could power a no-maj car with the oil and magical spells he uses to make his hair straight.”

"How do you know about his hair? I only know because I saw his sticky notes to buy more hair straightening gel,” Queenie inquired as she tilted her head in befuddlement.

"Hex explosion from before you and your sister started here. Nearly burned all the interns’ clothes. Most of them had to shower brimstone off their bodies, luckily no permanent wounds. But everyone got a gander at Abernathy without the damn gel. Gotta say, it's much better than whatever look he's going for,” Percival noted with an eye roll.

“Give me a time frame for when to have him prepped, and it’ll be done."

“When does he bring those cupcakes he bakes?”

“Fridays, and how do you know about that? You aren’t in our department, and our lounge is on the opposite side of the building?”

Percival refocused his efforts to avoid eye contact by fiddling with the bookshelf at the end of the hallway near Queenie’s desk. His guilty expression and bad posture was more fitting of a young child admitting they broke the cookie jar than one of the most powerful wizards in the country. But eventually he responded to the question. “…After returning to the auror department, Tina got into the habit of swiping a couple of those cupcakes from the wands’ lounge and smuggling them back to her desk. And I might take a couple as collateral if she fails to complete her paperwork on time.”

“You scoundrel. She never completes her paperwork on time.”

“I know. But the snacks in the lunch area are horrible, and those cupcakes are delicious.”

A sweaty auror came sprinting  towards Director Graves, barely able to catch his breath as he stopped in his tracks before colliding into Queenie’s desk. “The Brits,” Agent Wallace gasped, as he held his chest and struggled to inhale fully. He fumbled to get his personal inhaler out of his leather coat pocket.  

‘He really should have taken off his leather coat indoors, especially if he was going to run,’ Queenie mused to herself.

Once Agent Wallace caught his breath he exclaimed, “ _The_ _Brits lost Grindelwald_. ” He took a deep breath from the potions vials before stating in equal fervor, “ _And a large number of his supporters have fled Europe using floo powder._ ” After the final proclamation, Wallace grabbed onto Queenie’s desk to keep from falling to his knees.

By the time Percival managed to send all on-call owls with messages of red alert to the more rural MACUSA posts, and personally phoned the more urban corners of the country warning all communities about Gellert’s escape, it was 3 AM. Luckily, the majority of the building was empty, but Queenie sent him a mouse memo stating that Abernathy would be working late too. Most of the elevator elves got off work at 2 AM due to a recent union strike. So Percival just walked down a flight of stairs from the auror department to one of the ‘free’ floors that didn’t have anti-apparation charms on it. From there, he easily apparated to the permits floor.

Once he arrived, Percival could barely see a damn thing. It was so quiet and dark and completely empty that it felt like tomb. Even when people were at lunch during the day, the place still had the faint buzz of the electric lights illuminating the dark corridors. The vast space always had some sound, like the clank of the typewriters working, or the scurrying sounds of mouse memos fiddling around. But now there was barely a whisper to be heard, and the only light emanated softly in the distance from Abernathy’s office. The faint light from his doorway glowed bright but soft, like summer fireflies. Percival quickly cast a lumos spell to safely maneuver through the rows of desks, but he made sure to put it out before reaching Abernathy’s door. It was bad manners to have one’s wand in hand when one entered a person’s workspace, and Percival always tried to act like a gentlemen when dealing with other departments.

Percival smoothly wandered into the wand director’s office, playing it off as him just happening to pass by at the ungodly hour, only to find Mr. Abernathy unconscious and facedown on his desk. A distinct, purr-like snore encompassed the large but cluttered maze of an office. Abernathy’s favored silver pen was still in his hand from trying to fix what was probably Tina’s infamous shit handwriting. Percival did not envy Abernathy for having to deal with Tina in a clerical job. It would be like trying to force a bucking bronco to host a tea party.

“Abernathy?” Percival stated clearly from the doorway, attempting to make Abernathy wake up and get himself in order before entering. After waiting more than long enough for an answer, he made his way into the labyrinth of cabinets. Percival strutted past the walls of shelves standing along the direct path to Abernathy’s desk like he was a visiting dignitary and they were the guards judging him.

He could barely see the lines between the soldier precise piles of folders alongside Abernathy’s desk. Abernathy’s strategy for refiling Tina’s many, many befuddling files was not so much an ‘in’ and ‘out’ box dynamic. All the piles had sticky notes denoting their category, such as ‘DONE,’ ‘Tina’s half-assed idea of done,’ ‘illegible, need Tina to read,’ and ‘she signed the first line and forgot to fill in the rest,’ with subgroups for each of those groups to go through one at a time. This organization of dozens of file reports encompassed Abernathy’s desk like bricks for the base of a fort. Percival paced past the overpacked desktop. He was just flabbergasted that the mile high pile of files hadn’t tipped over and smothered Abernathy in his sleep. Due to the soft but dull lighting of the overfilled office, Percival failed to notice the long, twirled phone cord hanging from the bottom of the pile on the desk’s left corner. The clingy cord  twirled around his ankles like a vindictive snake. The dark grey curl of the line was unseen until it was too late to do anything except flail for something to save himself from collapsing. Percival’s old reflexes managed to help him grab an old drawer in Abernathy’s desk, but his momentum, and the strong drawer handle with weak wood, led to him ripping out the drawer completely. This resulted in all of Abernathy’s small, personal items, like family pictures, ID cards, and personal notes, escaping in a gust of movement as Percival crashed to the floor.

A photo of what looked like preteen Abernathy and a teenager, with what looked to be ink doodles along his legs and arms, stared at Percival from the tile floor. Abernathy hid behind the teenager’s leg, while the teen flipped off Percival for waking them up by moving the photograph. As he reeled from the sting of colliding with the marble floor, Percival swore to himself.

“Why the fuck is his phone cord the same color as his floor tiles?!” The softness of his voice belied the intensity of his frustration at falling like a moron. Percy then merely grumbled about hurting his bad knee as he tried to pull himself up by grabbing the display shelf opposite to the desk. The cheap shelf cracked under his weight. The hairline fracture of a crack split all the way across the shelf and shifted it slightly forward, just enough to let the family crest that brandished the shelf like a large jewel  tilt forward and fall to the ground. The crest sounded like a car colliding with a wall upon impact. It violently echoed throughout the entire wand permit department. The echoes soon faded like ghosts at dawn, but the soft purr of Abernathy’s faint snoring drifted into the air replacing them.

‘ _Fuck_ ,’ Percival thought as he swerved to look back at Abernathy, who was somehow still completely undisturbed by the two crashes. Percival was absolutely gobsmacked about how unbothered and blissful Abernathy remained despite such disasters occurring next to him.

“Either he hasn’t slept in a week, or he has some strong whiskey hidden here somewhere,” Percival mused as he finally got to his feet and examined the extent of mayhem his falls had created. Looking down, he saw both of the boys in the photograph keeled over in laughter and pointing at him. Percival thanked his lucky stars older magical photographs were like no-maj movies: no sound. The incident of his fumbles in the dark office were safe with the laughing teens. It didn’t help with the embarrassment, but it helped soothe his foul mood. It took a couple minutes of shuffling the chaotic scene back into the pristine order Abernathy lived by with spells and some wandless magic. But after erasing all evidence of his blunders, and taking the cupcakes that had been hidden by the family crest as his own for his trouble, Percival tried to wake up the comatose bureaucrat.

“Abernathy,” Percival stated as he tapped the man’s shoulder.

Abernathy didn’t respond, just stayed as still as a corpse.

So Percival tried again, but louder and harder. "Director Abernathy!” Still nothing. The cycle of no response and trying a more intense tone and physical contact eventually devolved into Percival violently shaking Abernathy in his seat and snarling at him.“ _Abernathy, wake the fuck up!.”_

Upon being shaken like a rag doll, Abernathy finally started to wake up from his sleep-deprivation-induced vegetative state and immediately nearly blacked out in fear upon finding Percival Graves shaking and screaming at him.

Percival chucked him back into his chair like a potato sack. “I’ve been trying to wake you up for the last hour, Abernathy. I’ve had friends who had easier times waking up from potion-induced comas than you."

“Sorry, Graves- I mean, sorry, sir. What can I do for you, sir?”

“It’s fine, Abernathy. I have a job I need you to do. One of the runners for the diplomat’s department got a bad case of the flu. We can’t just replace somebody we trust with documents of international importance with any guy on the street.You were next on the list of high level officials with clearance to carry similar documents .”

“Of course, Director Graves. It’d be an honor, sir,” Abernathy answered immediately, too nervous to say anything else.

“Just pick up the documents from the diplomat’s secretary on Friday morning, and bring them to the strategy room by noon sharp.”

“Yes, sir! Thank you for the opportunity, sir!”

“Very good, Abernathy, now go home already. The cleaning staff were starting to worry that you’d died in your seat, you were so still for the past hour.”

Abernathy nervously fixed his jacket and tie as he responded. “Of course, it’s late. The work will still be here tomorrow morning."

“See you Friday, Abernathy.”

“Yes, sir.”

It was Friday, and Abernathy’s energy could barely be contained in his body. He was practically vibrating, he was so jittery about being responsible for delivering the international documents. He wished he had the clearance to read what was inside the binders. He already delivered next week’s batch of cupcakes to the wand’s lounge. A third of his entire department, and a handful of vagabond house elves, were waiting like patient pigeons for him. He just put the half crate of cupcakes onto the main table, grabbed one for himself, and booked it out of there before they descended on the sweets. He already documented, registered, and filed all the wand registration forms that were owl delivered from out of state wizards and disabled wizards who couldn’t travel without attracting attention. And there wouldn’t be much foot traffic for witches and wizards renewing their licenses until after 4:30, when most early day shifts ended. They’d had four people register or renew their licence in person since they opened. The only one that took time was the elderly witch named Patrice, who needed help  reading the fine print. The lady was as sweet as sunshine and honey, but she kept pinching Abernathy’s face and calling him a fine young man.

“This is my lucky day. The head of the Department of Wands itself is here to help little ol’ me with these confangled new papers I need to do.”

Abernathy could hear Queenie’s tittering giggles behind his back in the archives as he helped the elderly witch.

Mrs. Patrice had bad arthritis and it just wouldn’t do to make her stand for so long, so Abernathy gave her the desk chair. He knelt next to her while he read her through the process, slowly but steadily getting her paperwork in order. The woman thanked Abernathy and wished him the best. She swore she’d mail his department some of her famous banana bread before she left.

But that was a over an hour ago, and here he was now, useless and bored, and it was barely 10 AM.  He took to pacing around his office like a caged wolf in the zoo. He held his hands behind his back as he paced to keep himself from pulling out the cabinet files and going through them to reorganize. He had already alphabetized those cabinets two days ago, and doing them again would only result in possibly smudging the dried ink in the now humid air.  He saw his reflection in the modest, framed mirror on the wall and saw his hair had already begun to curl from the humidity. He paced back to his desk and got out his jar of enchanted pomade. He doubled back to the front of his office to use the mirror as he fixed his hair. With his trusty magic comb and the pomade, it only took a moment to tame the waves. He always disliked his curls, especially since it came in style for the modern women to have them. Most modern ladies could spend hours trying to get the kind of wavy, mermaid curls that Abernathy’s bedhead naturally created.

Queenie walked by his office and knocked at the door frame. “Director Abernathy?”

“Yes, Queenie?” Abernathy inquired as he spun around towards her. Queenie’s mild frown made him nervous for the reason she was at his doorway.

“People on the floor below yours are asking if you are, and I’m quoting them on this, ‘ _holding a giggle water swing dance party’_ in your office _._.”

“Gosh molly.” Abernathy slouched down into his seat and put his face in his hands in frustration.

“Queenie, please give them my deepest apologies. I’ll put up a silencing hex on the ground.”

“Boss, if you’re that stir crazy, why don’t you go down to the auror department? Tina said they’ll be finishing processing and hex-checking the container of confiscated wands from a recent smuggler’s shipment today. The most wieldable wands will either be registered and sold to acceptable merchants, or be kept in archives as back up wands for veteran aurors.”

“They caught an illegal wands dealer and **_no one told me!_ **?” Abernathy exclaimed as he all but sprinted past Queenie. He was almost out of his office before he stopped dead in his tracks.

“Let me just lock up the international documents I need to deliver at noon.”

“I’ll meet you at the elevator, sir.”

_“Abernathy , heads up._

_“Goldstein, what are you doi-_ ” An oozing slime ball cut his sentence short by hitting his entire upper body. Abernathy attempted to wipe the slime from his face, afraid to do anything except that.He was unable to open his eyes because the goop was so thick it was like sludge. He heard Tina’s voice as he felt a small hand grab one of his arms.

"Showers. It’s like poison ivy, you need to use the warm water to keep it from giving you a nasty rash.” Tina shrilled as she apparated them both to the training floor showers a dozen floors up.

“I’m placing you near the showers with them running. In a minute, I will leave, so you can undress. God knows I don’t want to see my old boss’s ass naked.”

‘fyopck yae’ was all Tina could hear from Abernathy as he wiped more slime from his face. It might not have made any sense, but Tina got the gist of how Abernathy felt at the moment. Tina fled to the separate locker area near the showers where Queenie was.

Queenie was near their neighboring lockers looking for a couple cleaning charms she put there for emergencies, like the one now.“Tina what did you _do_ to him?” Queenie pleaded as she grabbed Tina by the shoulders, clearly frazzled by Tina’s means of getting her boss into the showers.

“It’s a healing slime Newt found in Borneo. It lives off blood wounds but dissolves in water, so Abernathy is fine as long as he doesn’t get stabbed before showering.”

“I’m not going to even ask _why_ Newt thought it appropriate to send you that thing. I have long since given up on questioning his odd motives.”

“Honestly, same. But I take his gifts with an open heart because he sounds so happy when he mails them.” Tina smiled as she tilted her head to see the picture of Newt in her locker.

The picture smiled back as Newt was covered in cuddly occamies.

After hearing the showers getting louder, Queenie and Tina heard Abernathy’s loud echo from the showers on the other side of the building floor.

_“Goldstein, I swear to God, if you so much as bring a keychain from Newt into this building again, I will personally end you. Oh God, this thing smells like dead seaweed and cabbage.”_

“She knows, Abernathy,” Queenie yelled back.

“Queenie?" Abernathy asked in confusion.

“I was just getting something in Tina’s locker when you two walked in. I think there is a nice, scented soap on the lower shelves in there. You can use that for the smell.”

“Oh, thank God. The smell makes me want to lose my cookies.”

“Oh no, please don't loose those cookies, we need to save ‘em for someone.” Queenie winked at Tina as she made the joke.

Tina rolled her eyes at Queenie’s innuendos.

“What was that?” Abernathy inquired as he got the goo fully out of his ears.

"Your baking, Abernathy,” Tina quickly responded, trying to cover up Queenie’s unclear innuendo.

Queenie then continued. “Abernathy, we were just saying how everyone adores your baked goods. Maybe you can bring some to the executives when you drop off the interdepartmental documents.”

“Maybe? I don’t know if you’re allowed to bring food into the strategy room.”

“Well, that never stopped Graves from eating my stash of cupcakes in there,” Tina grumbled, begrudging her boss for eating her stolen snacks.

"Abernathy, should I use a cleaning spell on your jacket?"

"If it isn't too much trouble. I think the only stains are on my shirt and jacket. Thanks, Queenie. It should dry by the time I get this sludge out of my hair.”Abernathy kept mumbling about the textures in his hair and happily realized that the shampoo left in the shower smelled like peaches.

Meanwhile, Queenie was looking through Abernathy’s coat pockets. She removed his charmed pomade and comb, leaving Abernathy’s spare no-maj comb in its place.

“We’ll leave you to your shower, Abernathy. Tina and I’s break is over, so you’ll be alone. Your clothes are drying out on the bench.”

After Queenie started walking toward the locker room enterance, Tina made sure to grab her suspiciously lumpy blue purse back out from her locker without Queenie seeing it.

“Thanks so much, Queenie,” Abernathy quipped as they left. Soon, he dissolved all the goop from his skin and hair. Abernathy finally felt the danger to his health had passed, giving him a sense of relief so great, he almost felt bad for yelling at Tina. Only almost, though. She still brought in an illegal beast and allowed it to fling its slimey goo at his head. For good measure, Abernathy washed his hair and skin twice with the scented soaps and shampoos. Never could be too careful with things Newt collected.

One of the older interns was still trying to grow back their eyebrows from when Tina brought in a pink pygmy dragon to guard the wand’s vault. It had been detained and sent to a legal breeder in Boston that knew Newt.

After soaking away all the tension from his body, Abernathy just stood there for a moment or two and enjoyed the heat of the water and the smell of wild peaches. He felt he deserved a moment of quiet comfort after enduring the gross smell and touch of the sludge-like monster on his body for so long. Feeling like he had wasted enough time under the spray of water, he got out and grabbed a towel to begin drying his body.

‘I should make Queenie something for sprucing up my jacket,’ Abernathy thought to himself as he started to put on his undergarments. Once he got his socks and underwear on, he started to search for his pomade and comb to fix his still soaking curls.

“Where is it!? **Where is it,** **_WHERE IS IT_ ** _?!?_ ” Abernathy wailed to himself as he frantically shuffled through all his coat and pants pockets looking for his hair pomade.

He swiveled his head around to see if there was anyone else in the locker room that might have borrowed his hair gel. He was all alone, and the chestnut brown crown of soft curls shown in the wall mirrors only motivated him to search with more gusto and anxiety.

“Good gravy! I can’t walk into the president’s strategy room with flapper curls!”

He was turning his all his pockets inside out and shaking them like a stingy niffler hoping the elusive hair gel would fall out.

“Maybe combing it will help with the curls?” he pleaded to himself.

Abernathy raced closer to the mirror with the spare comb and combed with much more rigor than necessary. But somehow Abernathy barely managed to straighten his curly locks into mermaid waves instead of cherub curls. It was still a far cry from the ramrod straight he was comfortable with his hair being, but he could not be late. He could already hear the training sessions end and the aurors coming into the staff locker room.

“Oh, Mercy Lewis, it’s 11:30 already? Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.” Abernathy quickly stumbled towards his fully dried suit and shuffled into it before the aurors could make it into the locker room. Even two decades and one mad streaking incident later, Abernathy was still as locker room shy with multiple people as he was freshman year at Ilvermorny. The sounds of the aurors talking smack and laughing about their session got too close for Abernathy's comfort, and he still wasn't fully dressed yet. He scrambled to get his undershirt and and pants on. Once he got those on, he grabbed his wand and the rest of his work suit and apparated back into his personal office. He locked the door behind him.

Abernathy quickly paced through the strategy room doors, the many important documents  holding him down. He held them high, as if trying to hide behind the stockpile of folders.

“Abernathy, just place those near me, by Sera,” Percival stated. Abernathy made his way slowly towards the low level table depicting all the noted movements of Gellert’s fanatics on the American continent.

“You do realize you have to put the documents down, Mr. Abernathy?” Seraphina asked as she examined the raised map on the table, not looking up upon realizing Abernathy was next to her.

“Yes, ma’am,” Abernathy reluctantly replied as he put down his shield.

The various conversations around the table dropped; you could hear the documents touch the table like cement bricks falling in an empty vault.

The sudden rush of silence forced Seraphina’s focus off the table. She looked to Percival for answers and found him smiling. His eyes told her to look to her left.

She didn’t expect to turn to smell Savannah peaches and see a bright eyed and blushing Abernathy with a wild crown of untamed baby curls. ‘When did he get pretty?’ Seraphina thought to herself after a long moment of staring at him, along with the rest of the room.

“Ma’am?” Abernathy asked as he wondered what he did in life to deserve to be in such a awkward position. He must look like an elongated cherub someone shoved into a suit.

“Abernathy. I would like to see you in my office after 3:00,” Seraphina stated as if she was talking about the weather and not a meeting in the oval office.

“Yes, ma’am. I will be there, ma’am,” Abernathy managed to state without stuttering or letting his nerves alter his tone. He shuffled where he stood and fidgeted with his tie. The motions of that always helped keep him calm.

"Stop calling me ma’am, Abernathy,” Seraphina said with a smile.

However, Abernathy's instinct to respond with sass upon being corrected arose in his next statement. "Yes, sir…” It took a moment for him to realize he just called a lady-and the president-a man, and all the blood in his upper body fled, leaving him boneyard white. He stuttered as he continued. "Wait Fricke. Sorry, ma’am, I didn’t.... FRICK.I mean, Madam President!.” His eyebrows practically reached his hairline as he fidgeted where he stood, as if he could hide in his own suit from the people in front of him.

Seraphina had to force herself to maintain a poker face and not laugh at his response. It had been awhile since she actually had to repress a genuine laugh instead of induce a convincing fake one.

“That will be all, Director Abernathy. I will see you at 3:00 sharp.”

“Yes, Madam President,” forcing himself to not call her ma’am again. Abernathy all but fled the conference room. If this was Ilvermorny, he would have gotten detention for sprinting indoors.

“For a petite man, he sure can move,” Seraphina mused to herself as she watched Abernathy escape the room before she returned to the strategy meeting. To most of his peers, Percival's face was as stony as it ever was, but Seraphina could see the faintest upward turn at the edge of his lips. Anyone else besides Seraphina wouldn’t have noticed. But to her, he might as well have been a fat cartoon cat with a feather hanging out of their smirking mouth.

“Now, where were we about the divination reports?”

Two and half hours later, the meeting ended. It took much longer than expected. The only thing more aggravating than deciphering Tina’s chicken scratch was dealing with the vague divination predictions from the diviner with English as their third language. Especially if it was Ivan, who refused to write  in his first language because he wanted to be fully Americanized. At least one hour of the meeting had to be completely removed from the meeting’s transcript due to clashes about Ivan the Diviner’s methods of relaying his predictions.

 _"Telling us when we should start preparing the building’s protection charms for the next natural disasters is more important than your cultural identity aesthetic,_ Ivan. _," Percival commanded as he rubbed his temples, willing himself to not punch his colleague in the face, or at the very least not cast the taboo imperio spell on Ivan to strong arm him into giving a coherent prediction._

_Ivan slammed his hands on the table as he rose to his feet, and he screamed back at Director Graves. "Sod off, you papa masturbator. I have the right to perform my job as I see fit. It’s not my fault you failed all forms of divination in your schoolings so you can’t understand the most basic of warnings."_

_"It's ‘motherfucker,’ you Slavic frog,” Percival sneered back and continued with, “Just write it in Russian so we can fucking do our jobs."_

_"I am doing my damn job, you’re just the idiot who can’t read things right. And I know_ this _translates in every language." Ivan raised both his fists and lifted both of his ring fingers at Percival across the war table._

_“Enough,” Seraphina quietly but forcefully exclaimed as she rose out of her chair. Even in the brash war room filled with rage and testosterone, everyone there knew better than to talk when Seraphina rose to her feet._

_“Graves, Ivan, knock it off. If I wanted to see two preening roosters dancing around and snapping at each other, I would have gone to a lightweight boxing match.”_

_Graves gave a faint chuckle at her description, even if it was at his own expense._

_Seraphina turned to her oldest friend._

_“Ivan is not under your command, Director Graves. You have no say in how he does his job.” Ivan confidently smirked as Graves looked down at his hands. Seraphina’s ‘I am calm, but I am still mad about your behavior’ stung worse than a slap to the face._

_“And_ you _, Mr. Ivan.” Seraphina  turned towards the head diviner, with equal discontent. “We respect your dedication to becoming an American citizen and making the U.S your new home. But like it or not, Russian is still your mother tongue. And we need these predictions to be as accurate as possible. We will make a compromise. For all further predictions you make, you will record the first  draft in Russian and repeat the process, and then write the same vision in English. You will be paid for overtime, but by writing in both languages we are more likely to get the information we will need.”_

_“Yes, President Picquery. I don’t know how similar each vision will be, but I will try to make it happen.”_

_Seraphina leaned towards the transcriber at his enchanted type writer in the corner of the table and requested, “Mr. Andrew, please remove Ivan’s and Percival’s bickering from the meeting’s transcript, if you can.”_

_“Will do, President Picquery,” Andrew said with a positive, upbeat tone that echoed through the graveyard quiet boardroom._

_“Good. Now can we continue this meeting like civil adults?”_

_“Yes, ma’am.”_

Once the meeting was over, Percival and Seraphina made their way to her office for their daily tea, which wasn’t exactly tea and sandwiches so much as it was caramel coffee, headache potions, and occasionally some Irish coffee on the truly hellish days. But they called it their tea time, because it sounded more like an elegant, soothing break and less like the short gasp of reprieve from their work schedules it actually was.

Once they got to her office, Seraphina made sure to cast the silencing charm on the door. No need for the staff to know how informal they were when out of the political sphere.

“You ain't that sly, Percy. I know you chucked Abernathy in my path so I’d have a plus one,” Seraphina stated as she refilled her endless teacup with at least half the coffee pot from the tray of finger snacks left by her secretary.

“Well, I will always be your wingman. And you _need_ a distraction from your work. At the very least, he's good arm candy for the week." Percival paused as he finished unwrapping one of the ill gotten cupcakes he hid in one of his many internal coat pockets.

Seraphina couldn’t help but giggle as Percy shoved almost two thirds of the giant cupcake into his mouth. The image of the head of MACUSA’s national security with his cheeks filled up with snacks like an overzealous chipmunk was literally priceless. Luckily, Percy was a fast eater, but that just made the scene more comical. Seraphina had to place her coffee down to not risk choking from more ill timed laughter.

Once Percival swallowed the last crumb of his snack, he turned back to Sera and argued,“Don’t judge me. I missed breakfast, and these cupcakes are one of the reasons I still get up in the morning.”

“I’m only judging your eating habits, not your snacks, Percy.”

“Good. Back to what we were talking about before. Best case scenario, Abernathy’s a decent week long roll in the hay. Worst case, he’s a dull but pretty accessory for the parties."

“PERCY!” Seraphina feigned shock at Percival’s language, more shocked he said it supposedly sober and not on his sixth glass of wine after work.

"What? It's not like you don't deserve some fun for once.” Percival shrugged as he took out another one of Abernathy’s cupcakes from his pocket. Percival started to unwrap it as he continued his opinion.

"It's been _eight years_ since you’ve had ‘fun,’ Sera. Even the Biblical famine in Egypt only lasted seven years.”

“You know the hours are shit, and the means of having a social life outside of work are worse, Percy. I don’t see you going around plucking up pretty young things for your plus one.”

She waited a moment, her arms crossed in aggravation as she waited for Percy to finish inhaling the second half of his second cupcake like it was his last meal.

Percy slowly chewed, both to savor the taste of the upside down pineapple cupcake and to buy himself enough time to formulate an excuse Seraphina wouldn’t see through.

“I’m going with Tina. I owe her a favor, and she needs to learn how to stand annoying rich people if she wants to get better at undercover missions. But back to you, peanut. If you were any more wound up, you’d snap like a violin wire and slash someone’s eyes out. Probably mine, since I’m the one closest to you most of the day.”

“But why _him_?” Seraphina inquired.

“I have my sources, and they say he's your man for this, peanut. And this proved it. In five seconds, he got you to stop thinking about politics, stop glaring at the war strategy table, and almost made you laugh. There are veteran aurors with less impressive things on their tombstones than what Abernathy achieved in under two minutes.”

“Just because he is amusing doesn’t mean he’d be a good option for the conference.”

“You insult me, peanut. I am the Director of Security, did you really think I wouldn’t do a basic background check before I let him near you?”

“Point taken. Go on,” Seraphina said as she sipped her new cup of caramel coffee.

“At the very least, according to my sources, Abernathy should be good for a couple of decent connections at the schmoozers conference. As far as the records go, he's likely a second generation American. His mother’s father came here, invented some random tool, and made a killing robber barons now dream of in the 1800s. But he put it all in timed funds so the family lives modestly. Abernathy is related to old money without actually being raised with old money. The only record I found of his father’s side was his birth certificate. I can only assume his mother, Maria, took some giggle juice to help the birthing pains. "Under 'parents' on her son's birth certificate, she just put ‘Marie Abernathy, and my darling husband, Reggie.’ Couldn’t find a marriage license on file, but they probably got married abroad. But we know his father’s a wizard, since there were no mentions of his mother’s name, or a Reggie or Reginald on the Steward registry for that decade. But otherwise, there isn’t a tint of scandal or a single smudge on his records. And, in our social circles, that’s a miracle. He’s perfect.”

“Ow.” Queenie cringed as she was walking back from the ladies’ room.

‘What is that sound?’ she thought to herself. She looked around, and since no one was reacting to that screaming pitch, she assumed it was her picking up someone’s thoughts. She was still too far away from the bullpens on her floor, so it must be someone in the unlit lounge area.

“Maybe an auror is having a night scare?” she reasoned to herself as she used her wand to turn on the lights softly to not risk scaring the anxious person. As the light lessened the thick velvet darkness that encased the room, she began to see a small outline on the leather couch. Slowly, shapes evolved into tints and shades, and then the barest hints of colors and textures came into view. It was a suited man folded in on himself and facing into the couch. It took her only a second to realize the suit and curly hair belonged to her boss, Abernathy. Queenie tiptoed across the lounge, unsure if he was asleep or merely lost in thought.

“Mr. Abernathy?” she murmured quietly, testing the waters rather than risk further scaring what already sounded like a terrified mind.

“Hm?” Abernathy barely turned his face towards Queenie, acknowledging her presence but uncaring about how he appeared. Which, given Abernathy’s particular nature,  gave off more red flags for his mental state than the internal screams Queenie had heard  from the hallway.

“Abernathy, what’s going on? Why are you sitting in the dark on your break?”

“Oh? I’m just thinking and trying not to die from anxiety and self loathing,” Abernathy stated in his normal tone, as if he was describing his plans to get a soda from a vending machine instead of a horrible emotional state.

“That’s impossible, Abernathy. And why would you feel like you’re gonna die?” Queenie sat next to him on the couch and attempted to put her hand on Abernathy’s shoulder, hoping to calm him a little.

His entire body quickly jerked away, his stiff muscles screaming from the sudden shift.

“Sorry. I’m just twitchy when other people touch me when I’m-well-this.” He cowered as he shuffled a little, barely lifting his head.

“Tell me what happened. Maybe I can help? Or do you just want to be left alone with a fresh quilt?” Queenie murmured in her softest tone.

"The president asked to see me in her office at 3:00. I made a complete boner in front of the president and the auror department. I'm either gonna be fired or  questioned for corruption because they think I lied my way into my job.”

“I’m sure it's not anything bad. You're good at your job, and she's an understanding woman.” Abernathy moved himself into a less pitiful upright position and turned to face Queenie on the couch.

“Queenie, I literally called President Picquery ‘sir’ by accident when I gave her the documents,” Abernathy pleaded with tears teasing the corners of his eyes. He leaned forward and hid his face in his palms. He hoped it was dark enough that Queenie didn’t see him wipe the emotional tears away.

"Oh dear…”  Queenie sympathized, but kept to herself because he already reacted badly to touch. She hated that she didn’t know what to do to calm him; the inside of his head was like a broken radio of static shrills and muffled words.

“I didn’t even have some cupcakes to distract them from my blunder,” he whined as he looked up  and stared into the distance like a condemned man.

“Then it might help to bring the rest of your baked goods with you to the meeting with Picquery,” Queenie quipped, trying to lighten the mood.

“I just hope there are a couple cupcakes left in the kitchen area. I saw your sister come in with her blue purse. She only carries that thing when she’s niffling the sweets I leave in there for overtime,” Abernathy complained as he shifted backwards to melt against the couch and stare at the slowly shifting tile patterns on the ceiling.

“….Damn it, Tina,” Queenie muttered to herself before telling Abernathy, “I’m sure there will be enough to bring to the president at 3:00. Whether it’s a good or bad meeting, the cupcakes will make it better for everyone involved. Now just focus on your breathing, boss.”

“Thanks, Queenie. I’ll be here for a little while, and then get back to the files.”

“You do that, boss,” Queenie cooed as she exited the lounge and rushed off to the elevator. She needed to confront her sister for becoming the niffler of sweets.

“Level two hundred, Mr. Red.”

“Two hundred it is, Goldstein.”

Queenie was beyond aggravated and all but stomping her foot in irritation.

It was unsettling enough that Red was outright afraid to look at Queenie directly, fearing he’d get a heel to the face for leering at her. “Level two hundred, Ms. Goldstein.”

Queenie whispered a quick “Thank you” before rushing towards the auror bullpens. Her entire body radiated frustration to the point of malice.

Veteran aurors hid behind cabinets when they saw Queenie strut down the hall. Greenhorns took to shoving themselves under their desks; they didn’t know who the lady in pink was, but they knew when to hightail it away from dangerous people.

“You stole twenty cupcakes, Tina?”

“…Hi, Queenie.” Tina shuffled the files in her hands and avoided making eye contact, hoping she had misheard the accusation.

“Did you, or did you not, swipe the cupcakes from my department, Tina?” Queenie stated again, crossing her arms while staring Tina in the eyes.

Tina reluctantly admitted “…Maybe? Augh, _fine_. I did. But Graves stole eight of them for himself."

“Put them _back_. Abernathy is gonna need them.”

“I thought he already brought the cupcakes and met whoever Percy wanted him to meet.”

“He claimed he forgot the cupcakes. And as far as I know, he only met the president, so he probably didn’t meet whoever Graves wanted him to meet. And somehow also dug himself into a meeting in the oval office.”

“Oh jeez, what did he even do? I had to knock out a no-maj to get summoned to the president’s office.”

“Just return the cupcakes, Tina. The man is close to an emotional breakdown, and those cupcakes are his way of feeling like he has a chance of not getting fired.”

Tina begrudgingly muttered “Fine” as she grabbed her tiny purse and was personally escorted by Queenie to return the cupcakes.

~

“Madam President?” Abernathy inquired as he peeked out from behind the ajar door into the oval office.

“It’s alright, Abernathy. Come inside, and close the door,” Seraphina stated as she put down the recent drafts for the ‘Sustaining the Squibs’ bill being debated in the lower House. Abernathy, after quietly shuffling in and placing a small plate of frosted cupcakes on her desk, took the cushioned visitor’s chair in front of her.

“So I, uh, made cupcakes and thought you’d like them,” Abernathy sputtered, too afraid to make eye contact. His mind already racing with nervous thoughts, he forced himself to not shake or tap his foot. Abernathy tried to soothe himself by admiring the craftsmanship of Sera’s personal  desk and the room behind her so he’d look at her direction even if he was too scared to make direct eye contact.

“Abernathy, I have a proposal for you. I need someone to attend the conference with as my plus one. Would you be interested?”

It took a long eternity of a heart beat for Abernathy to summon the courage to say, “Wait, what?”

“Don’t make me repeat it, Abernathy. Are you willing to go to the conference with me?”

“Yes, but I don’t think I would be a good choice for, ah, such an important-” He was cut off.

“I had Percival check you out. You checked out all the needed security protocols, and you know the basics of surviving the kind of guests who are attending.”

‘Yeah, a little too well,’ he thought to himself. “But are you sure you want me? Mr. Graves seems to be more on your level.”

“I consider Percy like a brother, and you seem as good an option as any.”

“If you are comfortable with my family, I’d gladly go with you,” Abernathy said with a gleeful grin.

“Then it’s settled. A house elf will send the needed info of when my car will pick you and your luggage up for the event in Boston.”

“Are you really sure, Madam President?” Abernathy implored one last time as he leaned back out of the oval office.

“I am. Now go. The event isn’t for another month. I assume you will have a couple tuxedos fitted by then.”

“Yes, President Picquery. I will. I hope you have a nice day.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steward Registry is just something I made up. It's a registry and a loophole for the Rappart's law. It's a list of "legal" squibs and mixed heritage wizards and witches with no-maj spouses or offspring. The registry allows the migration of foreign immigrants or visiting diplomats into the community without risking political scandals internationally. They can't obliviate every inter magical couple that visits the u.s, there would be political discord and backlash from liberal magical communities.  
> Not to mention the public outrage within the MACUSA community itself. Think about it, imagine a magic couple having a natural squib or no-maj child. With the rapport's law the child would be oblivated so much they can't even recognize their family and then be ripped away and left in a penniless no-maj orphanage for no moral reason beyond they can't use a wand. What's the point of protection laws if you are hurting the people you are sworn to protect?
> 
> Quilt” was slang for warming alcoholic beverages.


	2. Mythos and Misperceptions

It was the first day of the week of parties. Abernathy paced with the fervor of a trapped inmate in his office, his suitcase behind his desk. He was supposed to wait until 1 PM to go to the pick up area. It was a smooth work day, so he just had to wait an hour and a half to clock out. He managed to throw himself into his work by spending his day in the MACUSA file rooms deep beneath the building, or as everyone called them due to the eerie vastness of the vaulted rooms, ‘the catacombs.’

The darkness practically hummed around you in the catacombs. With the casting of a lumos spell you are able to see, but the only sound in the quiet left behind is your own heartbeat. Most people in Abernathy’s department were willing to take any shift on any day of the year rather than go down there. They gave up trying to hire free house elves to work as clerks down there because they’d quit after two months it was so unnerving.

Abernathy was the only one in his department that didn’t dread going down there. He had always been sensitive in regard to sound and light, and with what he just went through, with all the buzzing thoughts in his mind, the catacomb’s quiet companionship was more than welcome. Abernathy had stopped questioning whether the meeting in Seraphina's office had happened or not when he received details about the masquerade themes for the charity week events in Boston. He was torn between great excitement and anxious despair since the memo mouse with the presidential seal scurried onto his desk with the details.

But Abernathy knew if he got on the same floor as Queenie, she’d know something was off. And she was such a nice, warm person, he knew he’d eventually crack and tell her everything. He didn’t want to risk ‘jinxing it,’ as the no-majs said. He stress-baked enough to feed an actual army after he got home.

The medics gave him side glances whenever they shared an elevator with him because they got at least four people a day with stomach cramps due to the fresh cupcakes and other baked goods he brought every day that week. The sheer volume of snacks made other departments bolder in swiping some for the late shifts.

Abernathy couldn’t lie about being a little proud. He would pleasantly remember how guilty Tina looked when he found her trying to sneak out of the kitchen and past his office with a heavy looking purse on Thursday. He had only come up to take his lunch break in his office when he found Tina with a milk mustache and skittish eyes tiptoeing past his open office door. The memory always made him chuckle; it was rare to see Tina riled up now that she was a full time auror again. The thought of Tina hoarding  his homemade cupcakes like a hibernating fire dragon for the upcoming winter made him laugh until his ribs hurt. Well, hurt more than they would have from falling out of his rickety oak chair.

Realizing it was finally closer to 2 PM than noon, Abernathy started to change into his chosen costume. He altered the texture of one of his plainer dress shirts and tuxedo jacket to look rougher and have a coarser cut, like real animal skins. He also charmed one of his nicer, dark, greater style kilts to fall more to his side like a loose fitted toga. He decided to wait until he was at the party to put the finishing touches on his costume. Currently, it was subtle enough to not make him stick out too much in public. Adding the rabbit pelt lining to his coat collar and kilt hemline, and hanging his wand from his belt like a club, might as well scream ‘Mug me, I’m wealthy and an eccentric idiot’ when walking down the sidewalk.

Abernathy realized the time, snatched up his suitcase, and cast an apparation spell to get to the elevator without anyone seeing him. Upon landing, the suitcase made a loud crash against the metal frame of the elevator wall. The sudden presence and loud noise knocked the goblin, Red, to his knees.

“Director Abernathy, pardon my French, but what the hell?” Red growled as he grabbed the elevator handrails to get himself back up. “You just took off three years of my life with this spook. Jeez, what’s got into yous? You never do stuff like this.”

“I’m really sorry, Red. I got a really important place to be. Floor negative one, please.”

“We all have important places to be. You didn’t even bend the rules against apparating in the building when you were called up here for your promotion to director. Why’s today so special to ya?” Red felt compelled to ask, curiosity sparking in his eyes.

“I got a date--well, technically a week of dates--and I’m taking the week off for them.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. It’s a miracle. You got a date, _and_ you are taking a week off work. Stop the presses, Abernathy is going to have fun.”

“Well, I hope I have fun, or at least don’t make a dork out of myself.”

“Here we are. Good luck.”

“Thanks, Red. Have a nice weekend. Feel free to raid the wand’s lounge for the cupcakes I made. Your kids would love them.”

“I’ll do that. Have fun, Abernathy.”

~

Abernathy coughed as he stumbled through the marble corridor of the Fairmont Hotel’s floo entrance.

A taller house elf caught him before he slipped on the marble floor. Once Abernathy got safely on his feet, the green-uniformed elf said, “Hello, sir. Might I have your name and room number?”

Abernathy took a deep breath after he finally stopped coughing to reply, “I’m Thomas Abernathy, President Picquery’s plus one. I just assumed she booked the presidential suite.”

“Let me just check the list… Here you are. Mr. Abernathy. The party has already started, but  President Picquery is in the Silver Pond Lounge waiting for you. Down the corridor, take a left, walk to the end, and then take a right, then two lefts. If you get lost, just follow the silver fish on the ground. The bellhop here will take your things to your rooms.”

“Thank you.” Abernathy was flustered by how quickly the elf spoke, and by the sudden jerk of his suitcase being taken from him. As he walked through the myriad of hallways, Abernathy started to attach the fur accents from his pocket to his collar and kilt.

The hallways of the grand hotel had become a difficult obstacle course due to the frigid weather and influx of guests. Most of the guests’ familiars had to be walked down the bigger halls by house elves. They could not go outside since all the expansion spells for the suites were maxed out to provide space for larger clans. The walking zoo of familiars only became more tedious due to younger, stir crazy children who were still too young for Ilvermorny but too old to be left at home with the nanny. Dozens of children dressed like Roman senators or demigods dodged their parents and nannies, playing hide and seek in the lounges and hallways. Half a dozen young ones nearly knocked Abernathy into a wall on their way towards the floo station.

Abernathy’s curiosity persuaded him to at least see why he had nearly become a wall decoration. He doubled back quickly to see a mass of children mobbed around an elderly lady.

She was wrapped in thick cloth styled like a Greek priestess’, with what looked to be a crossbreed between a Kneazles and an ocelot. The creature was practically clinging to her face due to the sudden rush of people around them. “Now now, Mrs. Pebbles. Don’t be frightened,” the lady cooed at her cat as she tried slowly to extract her from her face.

“Wait, I know that voice. Can’t be,” Abernathy whispered to himself as he stood on the balls of his feet, trying to get a better look from a distance.

“Mrs. Pebbles is a bit overwhelmed at the moment, but I promise you lot can pet her at some point this weekend,” the elderly witch said in a cheerful tone as she tried to part the sea of children. Looking up, she spotted Abernathy. “Mr. Abernotty!” she proclaimed in an excitable tone that belied her old age.

“Hello, Ms. Pilliwinkle. I didn’t expect you to be here.”

“Well, a gal’s gotta get some backers if she ever wants to open a new store. Gonna open me a toy store to sell my designs. But enough about me, don’t you look nice in your gentleman hunter toga thing.”

“Thank you. I hate to run, but I have to go meet up with my date,” Abernathy apologetically explained, trying to turn back.

“Don’t let me stall you. Go paint the party red, or whatever young people say nowadays.”

“It was nice meeting you again, Ms. Pilliwinkle.”

“Nice to see you too, Abernatty. Hopefully we can talk more later. Have fun at the party.”

By the time Abernathy finally arrived, he had managed to get his jacket and costume fully straightened out. He prayed he hadn’t made Madam Picquery too late for the festivities as he swung open the silver French doors to the lounge.

Abernathy nearly swallowed his own tongue upon seeing Seraphina in her gown.  

The body of Seraphina’s navy blue dress was covered in dark blue sequins sewn into floral patterns, her shoulders covered in transparent lace with small, kitten-paw-pink and robin’s-egg-blue lace wildflowers that matched the ones on the crown of flowers on her headwrap.

Seraphina had always been a sight to behold, but now she looked to have taken the first night of spring and sewn the cool breezes and bursting blooms into a chic dress.

Abernathy’s rapid thoughts were spinning poetry from Seraphina’s dress. For a second, his most coherent thought was, ‘She took the last whispers of frost from Old Man Winter and sewed them into flowers against the dusk sky. Her skirt is made from the fog of dawn that kisses all the sleeping flowers with morning dew. And the flowers gracing her shoulders, so soft and pale, the first defiant blooms after such a frigid night.’ It truly was a pity most of his romantic thoughts came so fast and varied that it would take him a full day to just write them down. He had no chance of expressing it because his tongue would never keep up with his mind.

The way Abernathy looked at her, you’d think he was a blind man given the gift of sight and seeing his first sunset.

The way Abernathy appeared to Seraphina was slightly less awe-inspiring. Abernathy’s costume did look well crafted and very handsome on him. However, since he walked through the lounge doors and saw her, well… He’d been standing and staring at her with his mouth open for almost two minutes.

‘Either he’s just realized this is actually happening, or he just got hit by a petrificus totalus spell,’ Seraphina thought to herself. “Mr. Abernathy, are you okay?”

“.....Wha? Um sorry, yes, I’m perfectly okay. Right, okay,” Abernathy scrambled to say as he walked over, fiddling with his claw cufflinks and refixing his jacket. He fought the habit to fix his hair, knowing it would only make his unruly curls even more wild. He almost felt exposed without his hair fully straightened, but he figured Seraphina must have liked it more than his normal hair since the strategy meeting.

“I’m sorry for being late. I swear the memo said to arrive at 7 not 5, and I got stopped by an acquaintance down the hall,” Abernathy pleaded as he gave her his arm to walk together.

“It’s not a problem. You arrived at the perfect time, actually. We will be there just late enough to be fashionably late,” Seraphina coolly replied as she rose from the fine lounge seat. “And we might as well be fashionably late; I had to wait a little longer anyway due to the extra security precautions in place. Normally, I’d only have three aurors doing the floor scan. But since Gellert’s followers tried to burn down the Hall of Magical Records the security team has tripled its numbers.”

“I heard. Thank God they installed a fire alarm so the staff could save some of the files.”

“It was only luck that saved the files, but what was lost is going to take decades to restore. Well anyway, the main ballroom is down the hall. I’ll let the staff elves announce our arrival before we enter.”

Abernathy merely listened and nodded as she led them down the fine marble halls, still reeling from seeing her and being so close to her.

"You make a handsome hunter, Mr.Abernathy." Seraphina commented as they walked arm and arm towards the ball room. Abernathy couldn't stop himself from blushing at the praise, he rarely went all out on his warddrobe so it was a nice change of pace. Especially when the praise came from such a beautiful woman.  
"Thank you madam President. You look stunning , as you did stunned me when I walked into the lounge. But I must confess, I can't place which goddess you are. You're dress is too bright and flowery to be Selene or Nyx. But it's too wispy and deep in color to be Persephone."  
"I'm Eunomia, goddess of order and law and a minor goddess of Spring and dusk. She's a minor Greek goddess, but I liked the ideals she stood for."  
"Well , minor goddess or not, she would have been honored by the fact you chose to come as her for this party."  
"You flatterer." "You make it very easy to be one. You look amazing"

~

As they glided down the staircase after being announced, the crowded ballroom erupted into a sea of murmurs. There were gasps of surprise and shock that moved from one end of the crowd to the other like a tidal wave of surprise as the couple descended into the crowd.

“Macduff!” A large man dressed simply in a traditional, winter style kilt waved toward them from one of the dining tables by the grand French windows. The man practically jumped from his seat with a drink still in his hand and raced towards Abernathy, all but screaming.

"Tommy, how wonderful it is to see you out and about!”

Abernathy tried to walk faster with Seraphina towards literally any place away from the loud, older guest.

Seraphina didn’t react, thinking the man in the kilt was calling towards another person.

Upon finally reaching the duo, he exclaimed, “President Picquery, I have to congratulate you for doing something impossible.”

“And what is that?” Seraphina inquired with a subtle smile. From this distance she could smell the whiskey on the man’s breath. But he looked like he was holding his drink figuratively well, and he looked honest-to-God ecstatic to tell her something.

“Ma’am, you performed a miracle. You brought back the socially dead, and even made Thomas wear a tux!”

“Who?” Seraphina was puzzled and tried to remember if she invited one of her eccentric friends to the event, but failed because none of them went by that name.

“Tomtom of course! No one’s seen head nor hair of him around the likes of here in over a decade!” the Scottish giant exclaimed as he patted Abernathy on his shoulder hard enough to jostle his entire body.

“I’m sorry, I was thrown. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone call my date ‘Tomtom’ before.”

“It’s short for Thomas but I haven’t been called that since Ilvermorny,” Abernathy stammered, the ends of his ears turning the faintest shade of pink upon explaining his stupid school nickname.

The Scotsman could sense a mild tension despite his blurred vision. He continued to push the topic. “In any case, I’m sure your cousins will be thrilled to see you here, lad. I’ll leave you to your date. I need to go make nice with a business executive interested in a brewery.”

“It was a pleasure to see you, Mr. O’Neil.”

“Pleasure was mine, Tommy boy. I’ll be sure to send your love to your father Reginald and your lovely mother when I meet them in Edinburgh next week,” O’Neil bellowed as he patted Abernathy on his shoulder like a rugby player congratulating  his teammate for scoring. O'Neil then faced Seraphina and nodded as he gave his goodbyes.

“It was lovely to meet you, Madam President.”

 “It was… interesting to meet you, Mr. O’Neil."

As they parted, Seraphina and Abernathy walked away from the dense groups by the staircase, hoping to get some semblance of privacy. As they glided around the impossibly large ballroom, Seraphina whispered, “So were you ever going to tell me your secret identity, or were you hoping it would never come up, Thomas MacDuff?"

“I thought Percival would figure it out before I needed to say anything.”

“Is there a reason you are hiding from your own name? I mean, besides the nickname.”

“This is gonna be a long story, Ms. Picquery, you should see at least some of your supporters before they drink the place dry.” Abernathy looked around and spotted the jet black countertops of the ballroom’s open bar near the north corner. He made note of where it was because he knew he was going to need a consolation quilt after he let the cat out of the bag.

“Fine, but at least start now, or we might never get to it once more of my contacts arrive.”

"I worked for fifteen years to get where I am. I got there by working my ass off and serving my country, I would be damned if...“ Abernathy paused as Seraphina’s gaze drifted towards the dance floor. He looked to where she was looking to see some of her wealthier supporters as they passed by. Abernathy tried taking notes in his head of their names, hoping he remembered them right.

“Would you please hold that thought? I need to make nice with the new ambassador from Spain before he orders some absinthe.”

“No hurry. I’ll go grab us a spot at the bar.”

~

“I feel ridiculous, Mr.Graves” Tina grumbled as Director Graves led her down the main staircase to the ballroom made in the likeness of Emperor Hadrian’s gardens.

Percival tilted his head towards her so she could hear his consolations; being able to further admire her features was merely pleasant consequence.

“Hush, you look absolutely lovely in your dress.” He truly felt she looked stunning all gussied up with her heels. If she stood with her normal level of confidence, she’d look like a modern Queen Hippolyta. Her sister was truly missing her calling as a personal shopper or a tailor. Percival would never have thought he’d see Tina in a high quality dress willingly, let alone a Grecian style that made her look like an Amazon.  

Percival took the easy way out for his costume: a simple pitch black tuxedo coupled with a darker undershirt and gray cufflinks and gloves. Simple as it may be, he believed the Titan of Shadows, Erebus, would be pleased to be rendered so handsomely.

Tina’s dress suited her so well, Aphrodite herself would be torn between pride and envy seeing Tina in it. The dress had transparent gauze hanging off each side at the the hemline. It flowed like rose petals behind Tina as she walked along the staircase, and the one sided strap elegantly highlighted the soft curves of her shoulders and neck.

Percival had to force himself to stop staring at her long, stocking clad legs and her graceful collar bone covered in similar transparent silks. This was a challenging task in and of itself because Tina was already statuesque from her height in flats, and with her three inch heels Percival’s eye level was right below her chin. Percival couldn’t help but be in slight awe as he admired Tina’s lovely, long, pale neck clad in violet silk and lace.

Tina was too anxious to notice his subtle admirations, “That’s more Queenie’s doing then mine. I feel like I’m sticking out like a sore thumb Mr.Graves.” Seeing her anxiously nibble on her pretty pink lip compelled him to lean closer for a moment- to whisper words of comfort, of course.

Tina glanced sideways to see Percival tilt his head closer to her shoulders. He got so close to her neck, his lips were just short of caressing her skin.

“Tina, we’re at a party, not work.” Percival’s voice was as rich and smoky as dark chocolate.

It reminded Tina of the chocolate hue of Percival’s eyes when he smiled as they passed each other in the hallways at work.

“You’re here as my date ,Tina. Call me Percival.”

The deep hush of a whisper against her neck felt more intense than a hexing. Tina had never been more **_aware_ ** of every inch of her body than she was at that moment. Soft tremors trembled down her spine, followed by the rising flush of blushing modesty from the sensation of Percival’s lips so close to her neck.

Tina’s sincere blush was absolutely captivating, the faintest kitten-paw-pink that caressed from the apples of her cheeks to the modest bust line of her dress. ‘I wonder how far down the cute pink goes.’ On that thought, Percival had to mentally slap himself back into focus. Percival had to replay the same phrases in his head to force himself to look ahead and towards the other guests. ‘You are here as her friend and her teacher. Stop staring. She already feels anxious, staring is only going to make her self conscious.’ But even then, he allowed himself a subtle side glance every few steps. Only to check if she had calmed down a little, of course.

As they got closer to the base of the staircase, Tina’s heel slid off the edge of one of the smooth, marble steps. Luckily, Percival’s grip on her arm tightened, and it helped Tina slow her fall enough to allow her to cling to Percival’s shoulder. Tina’s entire face tinted pink from the embarrassing moment. The momentum of the fall made it easy to hide her blush in Percival’s broad shoulder. This was one of the few moments in Tina’s life when her instincts told her to run instead of fight, and she actually wanted to agree with them.  “I nearly broke my neck, and we aren’t even in the ballroom yet, Graves. I’m not cut out for this.”

“That’s why we’re here, Tina. You need to learn how to blend in and not react to a situation.”  “Yeah, waltzing with a foreign sheik at a swell party is gonna prepare me to deal with groping gangsters in pool holes.”

“Okay, one, if you are roped in to dance with Prince Amir, you are probably gonna be groped if you aren’t careful. And two, if you can survive what comes out of some of the more long winded scions or sharp tongued debutantes at this party, there would be nothing the criminal underworld could throw at you to make you break cover. People are still arriving, so we just need to do walk bys for now. Just try to relax.”

“There a million important politicians and stars and people are going to be here. Odds are I am going to make an idiot out of myself,” Tina frantically said as her voice got higher with her anxiety.

“Shuuussshhhh.” Percival gently placed his index finger against her lips and used subtle, wandless magic to tilt her chin to face him.

Tina was hypnotized by the aurulent hue of Percival’s eyes under the sunlight enchantment over the ballroom. Percival’s eyes gave the impression of a wild apple tree grove soaked in the warm beams of the first sunrise of autumn. As Tina forgot what she was overthinking for a moment, she heard Percival sternly state,“Tina, I need you to breathe. Don’t think for a moment, just breathe.”

Tina took a deep inhale; she almost became dizzy from the gasp.

Percival continued, “Hold it for a moment, then breathe out of your nose.”

Tina followed his advice and felt oddly calm. Before she could ask why Percival was talking her through the simple act of breathing, Percy explained.

“A monk taught me this exercise, keeps your heartbeat and mind centered. It has saved my arse more times than I care to count. You looked more nervous now than you did before your first gun smuggling raid.”

“That’s because there is protocol I could master for raiding a weapons den. I know how to improvise in that situation. I can’t exactly cast an ‘anti-stupidity’ charm on myself while chatting with rich academics.”

“I wouldn’t have brought you here if I didn’t think you could handle it. You’re more well read than most of the department, were a candidate for valedictorian of your year at Ilvermorny _and_ at the Auror training academy. And you’re you. That puts you ahead of most of these rich turkeys.”

Tina practically glowed with Percival’s praise. Tina coughed to get him to stop because people were starting to stare. “So… drinks? The invitation did say there was gonna be an open bar.”

“Lead the way, Tina. Just try to do the breathing technique as we smile and wave; it helps keep composure. I know _I_ need to do it when I talk with diplomats.”

~

As Abernathy watched Seraphina glide towards him at the bar, he rushed off his seat to pull a bar stool out for her. He was too busy looking around the room trying to match names to faces that he didn’t bother to look at the chairs or the ground. As he tried to pull out the chair, his arm halted mid motion, unable to pull it back. It was only then he looked down and saw that all the bar stools were bolted into the marble flooring around the bar area. He froze, and a red tint flooded from his ears all the way down to his neck.

“I appreciate the gesture, but you don’t need to rip out the furniture for me, Tom.”

“Yes, of course, um. Let’s just order drinks now,” Abernathy stated as he took the seat next to Seraphina.

Seraphina raised her arm to get one of the bartenders’ attention. People were still too busy trying to show up fashionably late like them, so the bar wasn’t completely mobbed with thirsty guests yet. “I’ll have a strawberry daiquiri, and he’ll have...?”

“Some ice water,” Abernathy mumbled as he slid back onto his seat next to Seraphina.

“So a cocktail and cold giggle water?” the house elf briskly stated as he prepared Seraphina’s drink.

“No. I want normal water,” Abernathy said again a little louder, putting his hands on the edge of the counter.

“That a no-maj version of giggle water? If so, I don’t have that.”

Seraphina had to repress a giggle as she was handed her lovely fruit cocktail in an elegant martini glass.

“No, I want _water_ water. The stuff fish swim in. Hopefully a little cleaner than that, but that,” Abernathy attempted to explain. He was already a bundle of nerves, and he needed to be as clear headed as possible until he was asked to leave. He’d rather be extremely uncomfortable than risk looking like a bigger idiot in front of Seraphina.

“You don’t look like you’re nursing a hangover,” the bartender said with a raised eyebrow as he looked over Abernathy. But he merely shrugged and took out a chilled glass from under the countertop with some ice. Then he snapped his fingers to turn on the sink behind him. The column of water magically shifted directions and flowed through the air to the counter before the knobs turned to shut off the flow. The stream of water circled above them and gracefully fell into the chilled mug like a well practiced diver into a pool.

“Please continue about your origins as Abernathy,” Seraphina implored as she took a sip of her blood red cocktail.

“Like I was saying, I’d be damned if I let my name reduce me to being seen as a trust fund bastard. I don't have Percy's charm or your unwavering will or brains. And my dad’s still getting malarky for marrying my mom over three decades ago. So if I went by my dad’s name, that’s all people were gonna see when they looked at me. A trust fund brat, or a bastard of a runaway marriage.”

“I can understand where you’re coming from to an extent, but how did Graves not find info about your background?”

“Despite the rumors, both my parents are as straight and narrow as a circus balancing wire. And the last thing I asked from dad's family was some help to legally alter my records so I could re-register under my mom's name after I graduated from Ilvermorny. I was thorough about it, so unless Percival physically interviewed my classmates or knew my mom’s birth name and her nickname, he’d never connect the dots.”

“Nickname?”

“My mom’s legal name is Mary, but there were already three other Marys in the family, so she goes by Minnie. My own grandparents never even bothered to call her Mary, just Minnie.”

“Either I’ve underestimated Percival’s research ability, or your superiors really underestimated your abilities.”

“Eh, I like the wand’s department, and I took it over after my mom’s friends retired from the department’s director’s chair. I still see him a couple times a month to go bird watching." Abernathy shrugged as he finally got to sip his glass of ice water.

An extremely tall, lanky man stumbled through a throng of Seraphina’s personal supporters and other guests like a small bull shoving its way through a herd of sheep. He stumbled a few times in his hurry towards the president and Abernathy.

“Tomtom!” faintly echoed over the roar of gossip from his direction.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Abernathy whispered softly.

“Another one of your family friends, dear?” Seraphina quipped as she turned in the direction Abernathy was staring.

“Family, actually. That’s my cousin Joe, the black sheep, and the only one I enjoy being with while sober.”

“How many cousins do you have?”

“On both sides? Twenty-eight. On just my dad’s side, twelve.”

Seraphina’s eyes widened upon learning just how many relatives Abernathy had apparently hidden from Percival’s background check. The man’s jolly voice got louder as he managed to flail his way across the ballroom towards the main bar area.

“And here he is, Joe. At least he still has his jacket and shirt on… mostly."

As Joe got closer to their line of sight, his ragamuffin appearance became clearer. His simple outfit was completely disarrayed. His waist coat was completely unbuttoned, and the hem of his shirt wasn’t fully tucked into his slightly fuzzy, velvet pants. His black tie was nowhere in sight. The man’s elaborate and eclectic tattoos peeked out from his uncuffed sleeves like whispers of color.

As he got into acceptable range of the power duo, Joe exclaimed in his thick, Scottish brogue, "Tomtom, you bastard, why didn't you tell me you were coming? I wouldn't have gotten so knackered so early if I knew someone worth talking with was coming to this hoity-toity thing.”

Seraphina smiled at the amusing drunk, and politely said, “You must be Abernathy's cousin Joseph.”

“Most of the time I am, but I became the satyr Silenus for this party. Had to spell my horse ears away, too itchy to wear all night. But then again, I’m tanked, so I could be Jesus for all I know. And you!” Joe turned towards his cousin. “You practically disappear for a decade then show up with the president as your date? I am so proud.” Joe’s infectious smile lit up his entire face.

Abernathy had to fight to keep from grinning like a loon, despite remembering the many, many shenanigans his cousin had led them both into as children while wearing the same infectious smile and mischievous eyes.

“Shush, you. You make it sound like _I’m_ the prodigal son in the family.”

“Hey, I moved all the way across the pond and I still have better attendance at these fancy parties than you, Tomtom. Every time you don’t come, my mum calls your mum to make sure you didn’t get buried alive under some shelf. Worst thing that could happen to me is that some fat bastard breaks my chair during a session."

“Well, I’m just surprised they let you back into the country at all."

“Eh, Rappaport’s Law can’t do shit to me or my clients back in the motherland.”

The odd  phrasing piqued Seraphina’s interest so she responded. “I’m curious, but I’m assuming I’m better off not knowing what you two are talking about.”

“And you’d be right, Missy Picquery.” His eyes wandered a little to the left over Seraphina’s shoulder, and then his smile fled his face and his eyes widened in surprise as he dove behind Abernathy’s chair. “Oh shite, I’ve been spotted,” Joe yelped, and he flinched away from the bar.

Abernathy and Seraphina turned to see what had startled the eccentric, seeing a pair of young ladies that looked like they walked out of a Mucha painting.

The duo giggled and waved at the trio before the one in a pale peach, Spartan style dress put down her chiffon shawl, threw back her drink, and made her way over.

“Okay, I need to go hide from the husband poachers. It was lovely to meet you, Picquery. Abernathy, we are golfing this week. No arguments. Oh hell, I need to hit the bricks. She’s walking over.” Joe fled at full speed away from the bar.

The lady in the short, peach dress merely walked gracefully in Joe’s general direction, all the while looking like the definition of aloofness and gaiety.

As Joe fled into the crowd, he almost rammed into Tina’s shoulder. Joe had the decency to give her a quick, “Sorry, missy. I’m on the run,” before running further into the mass of people.

Tina barely felt the collision she was so lost in her head trying to remember all the diplomats’ names.

Percival gave a heated glanced back at Joe as he fled before motioning towards the bar. After listening to so much nothing and trying to keep Tina calm, he felt he deserved a nice, stiff drink.

“Graves!” Seraphina spoke as she waved down her trusted advisor.

Percival paced over towards the bar with Tina on his left arm. The closer he got, the more unsettled he became from Seraphina’s cold expression. Normally, he would be at peace with her expression, but the moment the frigid neutrality of her appearance reached her eyes, he knew a war was coming either to MACUSA or to him personally.

“President Picquery, Director Abernathy,” Graves greeted, nodding towards his colleague and dearest friend.

“Madam President,” Tina said in a respectful tone, standing straight and removing herself from Percival’s arm. Even if she wasn’t one for fashion, Tina couldn’t help but admire Picquery’s eye catching dress.

“Hello Graves, hello Ms. Goldstein,” Abernathy squeaked. He could feel Seraphina’s discontent towards Percival without even looking directly at her.

“It is a lovely night. You two look wonderful,” Tina said as she examined the floral sequins on Seraphina’s dress.

Seraphina quietly grabbed Percival’s free arm as she turned and said to Tina, “Thank you, Ms. Goldstein. But if you don’t mind, I need to borrow your date for a moment.”

“Absolutely, Madam President. Take your time,” Tina said as she took the stool on the other side of Abernathy.

Tina turned to the bartender and gave her order of three shots of giggle water before shifting back towards her old boss. “You asked out President Picquery?”

Abernathy didn’t even look up from his ice water as he slumped over the bar.

“ _She_ asked _me_ out, actually. And I hope I didn’t ruin her reputation by accepting.”

“You are not that bad, Ab,” Tina argued after taking the first shot of giggle water.

“Ab?” Abernathy inquired as he turned slightly towards Tina.

“Ab, short for Abernathy. Your name? We are not at the office, we’re at a party. It’d be odd to call you Director Abernathy here.”

“Technically, my first name’s Thomas,” Abernathy grimaced as he remembered his stupid nickname before continuing. “You know, Ab doesn’t sound so bad. Let’s stick with that.”

“Okay, any other secrets you want to tell me? I’ve known you for years, Queenie even longer, and this is the first time I’ve heard Abernathy is your last name.”

“I changed it straight out of Ilvermorny.”

“Why?” Tina asked sincerely, curious about her previous superior’s past.

“If it isn’t my lost cousin, Tomtom!” someone exclaimed from behind them.

Abernathy just groaned as his cousin James got closer. He hunched over and stared into his glass of ice water, trying to make it seem like he didn’t hear James. Abernathy grumbled to Tina,

“For many, many reasons. That nickname is one of them. And another is coming this way.”

“Nice to see you still breathing, Tomtom. I haven’t seen your big, doe eyes since our school years. And is this your date?” James inquired.

“This is Tina Goldstein, a colleague. My date is enjoying a quick waltz with an old friend, and Tina’s date is talking business with his superior.” Abernathy’s body language screamed ‘buzz off,’ which his self serving cousin politely ignored.

“So you two are just sitting like barflies until they come back? Whispering government secrets or sweet nothings to each other?”

“No, we’re doing necromancy and bringing the wine grapes back to life. We’re work friends enjoying nice drinks and conversation,” Tina snarked.

“Yikes, you got some moxie, Goldstein. I’m surprised you’d enjoy hanging out with straight laced Tomtom.”

Abernathy said nothing, but his brow said how much he wanted to hex his cousin.

“It was nice to meet you, Ms. Goldstein. Tomtom, send me an owl so we can catch up later. I need to go check on my date.”

“Well, he was pushy.”

“Oh, that was him on his best behavior. I’m surprised he didn’t grill you for stories about my Uncle Donald.”

“How did you ever survive growing up with him, Tomtom?” Tina said with a smirk. She wished Queenie was there to give her more of the scoop about that nickname.

“Do you want the secret to figuring out who the hell all these people’s names are, or do you want to give me junk over my childhood nickname?”  
“I’m sorry, Aber. Continue,” Tina said with a giggling grin.

"The secret to figuring out who is who is acting super polite and remembering at least the last names of all the respectable families, and just basic geography.”

“You’re gonna need to elaborate. Because that last part is tripping me up.”

“I’ll get to that. First, I’m gonna tell you how to figure out who is who. If you can't follow a story about... I don’t know, let’s say some girl who invented a new hair curling charm. Don’t ask who she is, even if you’ve never met her. Especially if you’ve never met her, it’ll just let them know you are new here. You have to ask a loaded question like, ‘ _Whose girl is Jasmine again?_ ’ That way you make it sound like you know who she is but can’t recall how exactly you know her. Then someone will say something like, ‘ _Jazzy's Margaret Dalison’s little girl.’_ And then you say, ‘ _I know of them, but I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting them personally.’”_

“Okay, I’m with you so far. Don’t look like a rube, and stroke their egos, got it.”

“Now, the geography. A lot of the older wizarding families are huge and branch off into dozens of smaller families. If you group them by where they live, I swear to God it will save you hours of aggravation headaches trying to figure out who they are.”

“Okay, geography. I’m with you so far.”

"Say you need to figure out who ‘Mary’ is in another girl’s story. Don’t ask who she is, ask where she lives instead. Like this: ‘ _Is Mary from Maine, or am I mixing her up with another Mary?_ ’ And then they will tell you where she lives and sometimes even tell you the most common thing about that specific Mary. They’ll say something like, ‘ _Mary is from the Dolores family of Arizona. She’s the firecracker that almost got expelled for pranking the dean with a no-maj whoopie cushion her freshman year_.’

“Good gravy, this is gonna be harder than dealing with Mitzy the deaf phone operator, isn’t it?”

“No, Mitzy sometimes actually turns on both of her hearing charms. This is gonna be harder if you don’t use my method. Do you have a pen?” Abernathy asked as he pulled out his wand and levitated a couple cocktail napkins from behind the bar.

“I think I do. This enchanted purse is the size of a hanky but can hold like a suitcase. Give me a minute.”

Abernathy had always held a healthy respect for Tina’s abilities as an auror, but as he was asked to hold the miscellaneous things she took out of her pocketbook, that genuine respect alchemized into a cocktail of respect, affection, morbid curiosity, apprehension, and just a little bit of fear.

Tina at first handed him a small swiss army knife, her wand, and a small case of mints. “Sorry for the delay; this purse can be a nightmare when I forget to organize it.”

“It’s alright. Happens to everyone,” Abernathy commented as he rattled the tin of mints before placing it next to his drink.

Tina pulled out her spare pair of sensible shoes and put them on her lap.

The fact that one of the shoes had a small roll of medical gauze told Abernathy all he needed to know about Tina’s previous endeavors with chic flapper heels. He was pleasantly surprised when Tina reached wrist deep into the purse and pulled out one of his chocolate-frosted vanilla cupcakes.

“Excuse me, I swiped this for the party because I didn’t know if the food here would agree with me. I’m not used to rich food,” Tina skittishly admitted, clutching her purse.

“I knew you were smuggling snacks!” Abernathy threw his head back in a light laugh and tapped his hands on the mint case. His tone rang like soft, silver bells, more victorious chime than the clanging tone of a church bell.

The sheer volume of the laughter startled Tina for a moment, but the Cheshire smile on Abernathy’s face soothed the anxiety of revealing some of her contraband cupcakes.

Abernathy eventually calmed down enough to stop laughing, but the smile clung to his face as he said, “I’m sorry, please continue, Ms. Goldstein.”

Tina pulled out a headache remedy potion--a small leather pouch with a blue ribbon tying it closed which he assumed was a gift from Newt and thus should not be touched at all--and what looked to be a nice pair of loafers.

“What? I’m not used to dancing in heels and I’d rather have a spare pair of practical shoes in case I break the heel,” Tina explained as she handed each to Abernathy to put on his lap.

“Makes sense,” Abernathy agreed as he sipped his ice water in one hand and held the shoes in the other.

“I don’t know how Newt’s Occlumency hex bag got in here, though.”

“Why would you even need an Occlumency ch- Woah.” Abernathy’s comment was stopped in its tracks mid-vowel as Tina pulled a no-maj pistol out of her purse like it was a harmless trinket.

“Tina!” he gasped. He tried to keep Tina’s hand with the gun inside her purse.

“What? I got a license. A fake one, but I passed the no-maj test to get it,” Tina argued as she pulled out the small weapon.

“Why do you have a pistol in your purse?!” Abernathy whispered his panicked desperation as he tried to hide the gun with the shawl Seraphina had left behind.

“Abernathy. I’m an auror and a woman. I’m always at risk. And at least it’s mostly unloaded.”

“You know what, I’m not gonna even ask why you loaded it.”

“Smart call. And aha! Found a pen.”

“Okay, give me it. We’re gonna be here awhile,” Abernathy solemnly stated as he tried to recall all the possible names Tina needed to know to just follow a basic conversation with a general debutante. Abernathy hoped Percival had already prepped her for all the new names of foreign dignitaries and people to avoid. If not, it’d take a week just to get Tina prepared for afternoon tea.

~

Seraphina took Percival’s arm and all but dragged him towards the dance floor. He could barely keep up with her long-legged strides. Even after years of knowing her, he was still dumbfounded how she maintained such sprezzatura while wearing stilettos. Most of her favorite shoes had heels so long and sharp they could be classified as bladed weapons.

“I’m assuming there is a reason for you stabbing my arm with your nails, peanut,” Percival whispered, barely turning his head as they made their way across the grand ballroom.

“Abernathy’s father is Reginald Macduff. The man who eloped with the mixed blood witch in his youth.” Seraphina muttered the statement through her well practiced fake smile.

Percival slightly cringed as she tightened and loosened her fierce grip on his arm, Seraphina’s tastefully manicured nails almost cutting through the fine sleeve of his favorite formal suit. Percival compelled himself to maintain a composed, neutral expression despite the pain. The only visible sign was the twinge in his right shoulder and the deep expulsion of breath in relief once her grip finally loosened.

The exchange was so fast that no one could have seen the more subtle expressions of the duo as they walked past. The party only saw the president take her most trusted advisor’s arm and walk towards the dance floor. The band was playing more classical tones, a slow, steady waltz for the older, much earlier guests. Upon arriving and getting into the rhythm for a traditional waltz, Percival and Seraphina could finally talk to each other without people overhearing.

“You are an idiot. How did you miss such a monumental thing in your background check? I was blindsided by one of the Macduff’s family friends. It was only dumb luck that the man was too drunk and happy to see Abernathy- I’m sorry, to see the long-lost Tomtom Macduff,” Seraphina stated as Percival twirled her.

“Eloping and marrying young isn’t a crime, peanut. I interviewed all of Abernathy’s old coworkers in the auror and legal departments. There wasn’t even a hint of legal misconduct in his history or in his family history. I couldn’t do a legal investigation into a person’s background if they broke no laws and weren’t at least implicated in a crime.”

“That’s no excuse, Percy! You come from the same elite background as Abernathy’s family. You would have heard about the elopement of Macduff’s oldest son. How could you forget the name of the woman whose marriage was one of the biggest social scandals of the decade?”

“It was over three decades ago, Sera. How come you didn’t remember Ms. Abernathy’s name was actually Mary instead of Minnie?”

“I wasn’t even born yet, Percy!” Seraphina muttered, annoyed with how Percival kept forgetting about their actual age difference.

“Let’s not argue about how it happened. We need to plan the next move,” Percival said, dodging the blame and spinning Seraphina in the dance to distract people from their tones.

“Well, it’s too late to ditch Abernathy as my plus one. His family and friends have seen him with me. If I send him home, his family will see it as an insult.”

“They’re gonna have a kitten if you use him as arm candy this week.”

“ _Shit._ ” Seraphina tilted her face a fraction downward and focused on breathing deeply to maintain her composure as they waltzed.

“I believe we are overthinking this, Sera,” Percival said in the knowing tone fit for an older sibling.

“How so?” Sera looked back up to her friend with tired eyes.

Percival took a deep breath before answering. “You described Abernathy as ‘long lost,’ didn’t you?”

“Yes? Why does that- oh. Oh.” Her mind put together the pieces before she finished her question. “It could work. It’d be difficult to pull off, but it could work.”

“It helps that you and Abernathy are such hermits. No one's gonna have evidence to contradict you.”

“Hey, you don’t exactly have the life of a drugstore cowboy either, Percy. But point taken.”

On that note, the band’s song ended. The dancers dispersed and recollected around the duo as they moved back towards the main bar.

“This is going to be a long week isn’t it?” Seraphina stated as she saw the large influx of already drunk guests strutting down the staircase.

“It will, peanut. But at least the company is good and the booze pretty stiff.”

~

“She keeps calling Tomtom ‘Abernathy.’ Don’t you think that’s strange?”

"I don’t think she even knows his first name.”

“She brought a man as her date without asking his first name? How… flapper like.” The ladies’ words might as well have been written in scarlet ink on Seraphina.

“Shut up, you judgmental hags. My cousin’s a grown man.” Joe interrupted the table’s conversation as he took the last bite of filet mignon sandwich he made from the bread rolls. He took a deep gulp from his beer glass to wash it down.

The entire table of proud debutantes were too stunned to realize that Joe wasn’t a mute, he just didn’t care to talk to any of them the entire time.

“Do you go out of your way to tell your new guy all the embarrassing nicknames you had at school? _No_ , no, you don’t. If Tomtom goes by Abernathy now, _he goes by Abernathy_. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves to talk less of your peers and your president.”

“I say!” An elderly matriarch gasped as she clutched her pearls. She couldn’t think of a strong enough response that didn’t go against everything she believed in in polite society.

“ _I say_ the truth, and you broads know it. And now I say goodnight, and good riddance to bad company,” Joe snarked as he walked away, drinking from a flask in one hand. As he walked around the still busy dance floor, Joe lazily looked around to see if any of his friends from Scotland had decided to come. He immediately changed direction upon seeing Margaret’s yellow hair ribbon in the mass of people ahead of him. ‘How best to deal with bad things? Avoid them,’ Joe thought to himself as he picked up speed heading in the opposite direction.

~

“Okay, so that’s the names of all the matriarchs and patriarchs, and a rough list of the major families.”

“My head is spinning, and I’m only on my first drink,” Tina groaned as she finished her first round of many.

“Thomas, we need to talk in private,” Seraphina said as she softly touched Abernathy’s arm.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Upon being called ‘ma’am’ again, Seraphina merely rolled her eyes.

Abernathy awkwardly jumped off the barstool before correcting himself. “I mean... Yes, Ms. Picquery,” he said before fixing his jacket and giving her his arm.

“That’s better,” she said with an even tone as she gently tucked her arm in Abernathy’s to lead him to one of the balconies outside.

The inner ballroom might have been enchanted to be like a Fae court of spring, but the hidden balcony led to the all-too-real Boston fall weather.  Luckily, there was a minor charm in place to keep the autumn chill and cold frost from enveloping the stone seats or the chess boards in place for bored senior guests.

They took seats at a smaller chess table, ones like the no-majs built in public parks. It was out of the way and close enough to each person that no one else could hear them continue their talk.

“I have a plan to salvage the situation,” Seraphina said as she looked around, making sure they were alone, no house elves or spying gargoyles looming around to leak something to the press.

“I just want to say I’m sorry. I swear I wouldn’t have come if I knew it could embarrass you,” Abernathy pleaded as he leaned over the cement chess board.

“Thank you, but in any case here we are. We have to make the best of it, so I don’t lose my political connections within the social circles of the twelve families.”

“Agreed. Wait, I haven’t done anything stupid to embarrass you. You know who I am now, so it’s unlikely for the awkward discussion to happen again.”

“The conservatives are always looking for a reason to dismiss me without resorting to racist misogyny. Me bringing the young scion to a society event as my eye candy, I might as well put a scarlet ‘A’ on my chest. ”

“Mercy Lewis, I didn’t think of that.” Abernathy’s face dropped. He had tremors of anxious energy throughout his body.

Seraphina continued, “If I send you home, they will take it as an insult to your family. Which would also damage my public image in elite circles.”

Abernathy sputtered out, “I don’t think the aurors can obliviate a whole ballroom of wizards and witches to forget seeing me. I’m so sorry.”  
“That’s not the plan. The plan is to pretend we are an actual couple instead of strangers attending a party. They can’t brand me a harlot if we are a couple, or badmouth you for being a plus one.”

“Well, that makes sense.”

“Right now, we just need to know the basics about each other to last the night. Luckily, half the night is over, since everyone’s fashionably late on the first night or already drunk from arriving early.”

“Great. So what do you need to know? Hmmm… I’m the eldest of six, four sisters and one baby brother Jonathan, or Johnny, who started Ilvermorny last year, and an odd number of nieces and nephews that you’d need an almanac and family album to get right names for. The only four relatives besides my direct family worth remembering are Joe, my Great-Uncle Donald, my cousin Angie, and her boyfriend Ronald. I grew up in Hell’s Kitchen in the Windermere apartments. You know how my parents got together, right? “Abernathy nervously asked, running his hands up and down his lap, trying to calm his nerves.

“Only the vaguest rumors I heard circulating over the years,” Seraphina replied.

He took a deep breath before continuing. “Well, dad’s family refused to help them for the first decade of their marriage out of pure spite.” He spat out the word ‘spite’ like an earwax jellybean, his brow tensed as he remembered what he had heard about his father’s family’s supposed behavior before he was born. “So we grew up in the apartment my mom got for graduation from her dad before she met my dad. Between my mom’s style and dad’s less judgy relatives, it was more than nice. Our place wasn’t the Taj Mahal, but it had more love in it than all the jewelry box mansions on the Upper East Side. Okay, now tell me about you.”

“I’m technically an only child. My parents are Philip and Monica Picquery. Most of my close family consists of dead relatives and neighbor ghosts that came with the house. Living in Savannah, you grow up as used to dead people floating around as living people. Our colonial brownstone was large compared to the rest of the street, but with the ghosts it might as well have been the size of a shoebox. But at least it wasn’t ever boring on a rainy day. I learned as much about magic, history, politics and truth from ghosts as I did reading the entire library at Ilvermorny.”

“Wait, didn’t Ilvermorny have like 10,000 books?”

“I’m a fast reader. And I got accepted into Ilvermorny a year early due to a recommendation letter from my godfather. I took so many courses that first year, I had  two free periods my second year so I wouldn’t overpack my class credits.”

“Woah… So should we do a back and forth of more stories or wing it?”

“We just need to get the basics to pass off the relationship. Say how long we’ve been dating, how we met, and how we got together.”

“...Well, technically we met when you got elected into office because you congratulated me for my promotion that same year at Hector’s retirement party.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t remember meeting you then,” Seraphina said in all honesty. She could not recall Abernathy’s face that far back. He wore simple suits, had such quiet habits, and was always in the background for department meetings. He practically blended into the building itself.  

“I was the one that Hector kept crying and lying on. He loves me like a nephew, and he got emotional from the gigglewater punch. You gave your congratulations, and then got some diplomat’s memo and had to leave.”

“Ah. Now I remember you. I got very distracted by the grandpa sweater you were wearing at the time. It had a couple moving cats on it. One kept swiping at your sleeves.”

"That was Hector's spare. He sobbed a stain onto my jacket and lent me it.”

“So we’ll say we were friends for six years and got together some time last year.”

“And we got together at the… I wanna say Christmas party, but that’s so cliche with office romances.”

“We’ll just say we gradually became a couple.”

“If they push for specifics, we’ll say our friends made us realize how good we are together.”

“Agreed. Everyone knows how pushy some people can get when they wanna play matchmaker,” Seraphina stated, remembering how Percival figuratively threw Abernathy in her line of sight as a date option.

“Believe me, I know.” Abernathy got flashbacks to his maternal grandma asking when he was going to give her some grandchildren that took after her side. Abernathy was the only kid in the family to take after their mother in looks, and Grammie Abernathy was still peeved about it.

“Now, let’s go back inside. With any luck the band will be in full swing, so most of the guests will be too busy cutting a rug to ask questions.”

~

“Okay, we’ve held out at the bar for a while. We can either go make nice with the sober diplomats, or we can go cut a rug on the dance floor with the happy drunks. You pick, since this is your first party like this,” Percival declared as he rose up from his chair while putting his dining jacket back on.

Tina couldn’t help but admire the width of Percival’s shoulders as he put his dinner jacket back on. “Dancing. I’m already half buzzed. And I’d rather risk looking like an idiot dancing than a general idiot. Let me just do one thing.”

“Smart choice,” Percival replied as he watched Tina take her shrunken wand from behind her ear and cast an alteration spell on her shoes to widen the heels.

“Better safe than sorry.” Tina smiled from her sensible fashion alteration as Percival helped her up from the high bar stool.

“Agreed.” Percival couldn’t help but smirk from pride as he saw multiple guests at the bar, men and women, staring at Tina and her starry eyed smile as she hooked her arm around his. Percival practically preened as they made their way towards the reflecting pool dance floor, enchanted to look and move like water without actually getting the dancers wet.

Upon arriving at the edge of the pool, Tina leaned in a little to whisper in Percival’s ear, “Percy, you do know in these heels, I’ll be the one leading the dance right?”

And like that, Percival’s face dropped and his ego deflated.

~

“Excuse me,” Joe hollered as he burst through the kitchen doors to the ballroom. This resulted in him almost kissing the kitchen floor and swinging the door so wide it nearly gave the sous chef a concussion.

“What the hell, you bum?” the sous chef Sarez exclaimed, miffed that he got knocked off his stool during his twenty minute power nap. He had specifically waited until the entire party had been served the main course for his break. He glared at Joe, who practically scurried past him up against the seasoning cupboards, far from the door’s small windows.

“I’m hiding, so please shhhhhh.” Joe put his fingers to his lips to emphasize the need for quiet. Joe himself was a sight to behold. He was sweaty and wide eyed like he’d been chasing ‘the white lady’ instead of running from one.

“Please tell me you aren’t dodging your bookie. I got enough problems.”

“Ha, I wish. No, there’s a girl out for me.”

“What’s she look like?” Chef Sarez asked as he took the stepping stool to look through the small, circular windows on the door.

“Yellowish toga dress.”

“There’s a lot of toga people, kiddo. It’s a pagan god garden party thing out there.”

“Hers is Spartan style,” Joe explained as he pulled out a cupboard door to hide behind as he inched nearer to the sitting house elf.

The elf’s raised eyebrow asked the question more than words could inquire.

“The dress is short enough on her legs to be risky even for flapper girls.”

“Okay.” The elf turned and whistled upon seeing Margaret looking around like a lost puppy, no one stopping to talk to her, some even inching away from her path.“If a looker like _that_ was looking for me, I’d be wearing a ‘ _here I am_ ’ sign in bright letters. You an invert, boy?”

“No. She’s just insane, and her family’s worse. I got two rules. _One. Do not fuck crazy. Two, do not fuck with crazy.”_

“With legs like hers, I could deal with a lot of crazy,” the house elf declared as he continued to leer at Margaret’s well-toned legs in gold heels.

~

To say the party truly started would be an understatement. The liquor might have been dry, but the guests were as wet as a Florida swamp during a tropical storm. The local American guests had all but drank their weight in various gigglewaters while waiting for the European visitors to arrive. And the European visitors were both entranced and intimidated by how enthusiastic the Americans were on the dance floor. Almost immediately after arriving, the foreign dignitaries, returning elites traveling abroad, and traveling businessmen were dragged from the hot meals starting to be served onto the dance floor by their dear and very drunk friends in celebration of their return or visit to the States. The wild ferocity of the swing dancers and the jazz band blaring was more intimidating than alluring when one was far too sober to enjoy it.  
“Do you wanna risk chatting with people at our table or dance?” Abernathy asked, hoping for the former, nervous by the sheer volume of drunk people on the dance floor.

“Honestly, I just want food and to go to bed. But I’ll settle for food and conversation at the table. I think we were assigned the table with the Psyche sculpture.”

“Alright, lead the way… Seraphina.”

~

“Oh, stop being such a big baby,” Tina sassed as she took out the gauze wrapped roll from her purse while taking the seat next to Percy at their empty table.

“I don’t even know what move you were trying to get me to do. All I know is that I _heard_ my ankle snap before I felt it,” Percival bitterly griped as he kept the cloth napkin filled with ice against his left ankle. His bruised ego was far more hurt by his stumble than anything he could have suffered in a wizard’s duel.

“You said you knew how to swing dance. Now just lift up your leg for me,” Tina said.

“What?” Percy asked with squinted eyes. He was far too drunk for a joke at the moment and still too sober to laugh off his twisted ankle. He was perfectly fine with the waltzing and then the Jazzy dancing, but then Tina tried something called a “swing” move and his balance went to hell.

“Put your foot in my lap so I can wrap it in gauze. It’s a sprain, Percy. But if you don’t wrap it soon, it could become a break. Unless you can pull a bone alignment spell out of your ass, let me wrap your ankle.”

Percival’s lips stiffened into a thin frown. He hated looking like a fool and being tended to like a child. But the mixture of pain and basic logic compelled Percy to comply despite his ego, and he gently lifted his injured leg into Tina’s lap.

Tina merely let Percy pout and removed his shoe to get a closer look at the injury, while keeping the ice close to the top of his ankle to keep the pain to a minimum. “This could take a minute. Try to eat something. This is our table, so at least two of these steaks are ours.”

As bad as their luck had been, fate at least let them have a mostly empty table and some steak to distract Percival as Tina tended his afflicted ankle. The only person at their table was a quiet, elderly lady who kept giving bits of her steak to her ocelot familiar in her purse.

“Well, at least we got a couple dances in to prove I’m not a complete dead hoofer.”  
“You danced like the music was going to get up and leave any second.”

“It’s not my fault the jazz band decided to switch to a samba beat in the middle of a medium song.”

~

“Madam President!”

Seraphina heard a familiar voice over at the tables. She turned her head to see Senator Barkleft at the table with the Psyche statue.

Upon walking over, Abernathy pulled out Seraphina’s chair for her. Thankfully, this chair wasn’t bolted to the ground like the ones at the bar.

The senator’s wife, Shirley, leaned over her husband towards Seraphina. “I must thank you again for switching rooms with us. I feel so much better about coming here knowing the night nurse can watch my Bryan’s health.”

“It was good sport of you to switch suites with us. My wife would have worried herself sick without my nurse Morvena to watch for my bad ticker.” The senator pointed to his heart with his fish filet filled fork for emphasis.

“It was nothing, Mr. Barkleft. You more then helped me early in my career. Giving you two the presidential suite for the week was the very least I could do.”

“Well that was very Christian of you, Seraphina,” Abernathy said as he carefully cut his steak into smaller pieces.

“Are you sure you’re okay with that?” Seraphina muttered as she leaned towards Abernathy.

“The first couple years in the wand’s department I slept more in my rickety oak chair than I did my own bed. I can sleep anywhere. I just need a pillow, and I could sleep in the bathtub if I need to.”

“You make your bodyguards sleep in your rooms?” Barkleft inquired; his hearing spell managed to let him catch the couple’s whispers from across the table.

“My what?” Seraphina asked.

Abernathy decided to remain quiet because he couldn’t figure out a polite way to correct the senator without sounding rehearsed.

Senator Barkleft continued, “I just assumed Tommy here was your bodyguard? I swear, I heard his father’s praises about young Tommy’s dueling skills so much that I could recite the things backwards.”

Abernathy blushed remembering how his father gushed over his dueling record at his graduation party. Abernathy turned to Seraphina to clarify. “I was co-captain at Ilvermorny. And my dad loves to spin a tall tale.”

Senator Barkleft snorted at Abernathy’s modest statement. “Don’t belittle your skills, boy. I was there when you won the advanced dueling competition in 1909. You knocked that Beauxbaton prodigy off the dueling stage with such vigor the lad went through the wall like a cartoon person.”

“He fired at me with a stickfast hex before I could turn around at the count of three; it was a reflex shot,” Abernathy argued. Almost twenty years later and he still felt so horrible about injuring Mr.Bonnefey. Bonnefey commended his reflexes and admitted to his ‘itchy trigger fingers,’ but the visiting students had given him dirty looks the rest of the semester.

Before Barkleft could continue his counter praise to Abernathy’s modesty, Seraphina quickly interrupted. “As skilled at dueling as Abernathy may be, he isn’t my bodyguard.” Seraphina’s tone got softer and harder to hear as she continued. “He’s my… boyfriend,”

Mrs. Barkleft’s eyes lit up as she smiled, absolutely delighted about the news.

Her husband’s mouth just gaped like a fish as his heavy fork crashed onto his plate. And Abernathy, well, he just tried to not blush too much as he smiled with most of the table staring at him with wide eyed expressions of shock.

~

“So, I’m guessing you didn’t find your black sheep bad boy, Margy?” Ophelia commented as her sister puttered into the chair at their assigned table and folded into her arms.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Phe,” Margaret muttered, all the hope in her voice fretted away from exhaustion and failure. Margaret groaned in reluctant acceptance of defeat  before bothering to turn her head towards Ophelia.“Did you find the liquid courage to get up and talk with the pretty girl dressed like Artemis?” Margaret asked while thinking, ‘I hope at least one of us had a decent night.’

“Can we just ankle back to the room now, and I’ll tell you on the way?” Ophelia said in a quiet, distant tone. Ophelia’s defeated expression told Margaret all she needed to know.

“Sure, Phe.” Margaret got up from her seat and took her sister’s arm to keep them both from tripping on the way back. Years of perfecting posture and poise their home tutors had taught them had  allowed the twins to remain composed and elegant as they practically glided towards the elevator despite their state of inebriation and hopelessness.

“So are you gonna tell me how things went?” Margaret inquired as they reached the top of the marble staircase and made their way towards the elevators.

“No,” Ophelia solemnly explained. She was too tired to finish the cocktail, but still wanted to avoid her sister’s pity. So she just used wandless magic to focus on twirling the toothpick to swirl the olive at the bottom of her martini glass.  

Margaret gave Ophelia a little time to think by pushing the elevator buttons and fixing Ophelia’s shoulder strap. Only then did Margaret push the question. “No as in you won’t tell me, or no as in something else?”

Ophelia took a very deep sigh and explained. “My pretty Artemis got swept away to dance by the president’s date, that Graves guy. Fitting that a man with the last name Graves came as the god of the dead,” Ophelia stated Graves’s last name like it was a vulgar swear that she had to wash away with her vodka. Once Ophelia lost the bitter taste of Percival’s name, she mumbled, “But I have to admit, President Picquery makes a beautiful Persephone. Even if her date’s a real prick.” Even while sauced, sour, and spiteful, Ophelia couldn’t help but admire Seraphina’s fashion sense and bearcat lifestyle.

“Persephone’s title of ‘Iron Queen’ more than suits her,” Margaret bitterly grumbled.

“Don’t be petty, Margy. You are just mad about how excited Joe looked while talking with her and his cousin before.”

“I thought we’d agreed not to talk about it,” Margaret growled. Suddenly, she reached over and took Ophelia’s martini and chugged it like water.Margaret then spat out in unrepressed anger, “You know what? I actually do want to talk this stupid thing out. I wouldn’t be having such an impossible time trying to flirt with Joseph if mother didn’t meddle!”

“You know she had good intentions for both of us at the time,” Ophelia argued back, only half believing her own argument. Ophelia was thankful that at least no one else was in the hall with them. Cautious still, she used wandless magic and cast a short hushing spell so her sister’s voice couldn’t echo down the marble halls.

“Good intentions don’t make her actions right, or even legal. And it sure as fudge didn’t make our lives any goddamn easier. We might as well be lepers. I swear, the ballroom parted like the Red Sea every time I went to the powder room,” Margaret fiercely stated, loneliness dripping from her voice. A soft ‘ping’ was heard and their elevator finally opened.

Ophelia quickly helped her emotional sister through the doors to help conceal the scene. Ophelia turned towards the bellhop. “We’re on the fourth floor, facing the gardens.”

The house elf set the elevator to level four.

Margaret’s tears started to softly fall as she turned to hug her sister and hide her face on her twin’s shoulder.

Ophelia tenderly petted her sister’s head with her free hand as she whispered,“Rumors ebb and fade eventually. It’s not going to be like this forever.”

The soft, whooshing sound of the machine mingled with Margaret’s soft sobbing. After a few deep sobs, Margaret gathered the breath to bawl, “No, but it might be long enough for us to grow into spiteful spinsters that get married off to the richest geezer without a wedding ring.”

Ophelia tried to cajole her twin into calming down, pleading, “You’re rambling, dear, let’s just go back to our rooms and try to dry out from this bender.”

“It’s unfair, Phe. It’s just so unfair. I swear I didn’t know about what she did, and now Joe is afraid to go within a mile of me. It’s so unfair,” Margaret rambled as she cried into her twin’s shoulder.

“Sssshhhhhh, it’ll get better eventually.” Ophelia petted her sister’s back as she helped her out of the elevator.

Even the bellhop couldn’t help but pity the two of them at that moment.

~

“Come on, I got you,” Tina said as she grabbed Percival and apparated them past the long, marble staircase.

“I am a veteran wizard. I can apparate myself, thank you very much,” Percival grumbled as he hobbled down the hallway to press the elevator’s up button.

“Yes, you can, most of the time. But you also just finished your fifth glass of beer, and you’re still pouting about your ankle.”

Percival muttered something unintelligible in response.

Tina couldn’t help but smile at his tiny frown. Sober, Percival could win the poker championship with his stony expression. When extremely drunk however, he was like an impressionist painting. From a distance you could barely see the lines of emotion, you just saw what the artist wanted you to perceive. But up close you could see the cracks in the oil paints and the reality behind the mirage. “Would it make you less pouty if I said I have a couple of Abernathy’s cupcakes from this morning on me?”

“Maybe… do you have one of the red velvet ones with chocolate frosting?” Percival softly asked, staring down at the marble floors.

~

“Corn muffins or blueberry muffins? Bagels or donuts? Butter or jam?” Abernathy asked as he and Seraphina headed back to the elevators to head up for the night.

“What?” Seraphina responded, a bit off kilter from such an unexpected question.

“If you had to pick a breakfast food,” Abernathy explained, hoping he wasn’t being too direct.  
“Why are you talking food? It’s technically tomorrow it’s so late,” Seraphina responded as they got closer to the elevators.

“I just wanna know. I personally love corn muffins and bagels with a lot of butter. Anything sweeter than corn muffins and I get hyper as a kid in a candy store.”

“Okay, good to know… Wait, is that Percival and Goldstein by the elevators?” Seraphina said with a bemused tone. She _tried_ not to laugh too hard as she saw Tina hand Percy a cupcake from her purse.

“Is Director Graves holding one of my red velvet cupcakes?” Abernathy muttered as they walked toward the duo in front of the elevators.

‘Oh God, Yes,’ Percival thought to himself as Tina handed him a cupcake. He brought the cupcake to his face; it smelled like sugar and heaven. A fraction of a second before he had his first bite, he heard Sera’s stifled giggle. He turned his eyes and found Sera trying to not laugh while hanging on Abernathy’s arm.

Abernathy looked absolutely perplexed, and Percival could practically see the list of questions being typed in Abernathy’s head. Percival stood there like a deer in the headlights. His sharp, brown eyes widened like milk saucers, his jaw opened and his teeth poised to chomp into the large cupcake barely an inch from his mouth. He slowly lowered the cupcake and tried to think of a way out of this awkward conversation. Luckily, the ‘ding’ of the elevator doors opening broke the awkward silence.  

As they all walked onto the empty elevator, Percival quietly told the bellhop the floor his and Tina’s rooms were on, doing everything short of climbing up the elevator shaft to avoid the awkwardness. Percival internally declared he was far, far too sober to deal with this cupcake contraband situation.

Tina snickered as she turned to answer Abernathy’s question. “It is. He’s still peckish, and I gave him his favorite because he was a good sport about me being the lead while dancing.”

“His favorite? Wait, has everyone in your department had my cupcakes?”

“No, but during the late shift if you bring out a snack, they circle like sharks with chum. So a lot of them either stole one from me or failed trying to,” Tina softly explained.

Seraphina fidgeted a bit as Abernathy asked why the entire auror’s department was addicted to his baked goods. Seraphina herself had had an intern swipe one or two of the red velvet cupcakes that morning for the wait until the party. And like Tina, she also hid her snacks in a separate pocket in her purse.

Upon hearing Tina’s description of the aurors as sharks with chum, Abernathy practically keeled over laughing. “I am the cartel of office sweets, apparently.”

Tina couldn’t stop giggling at Abernathy’s new, unofficial job title: leader of the MACUSA cupcake cartel.

“This is your floor, mister.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning at the meeting, peanut,” Percival quickly said as he rushed out of the elevator with his cupcakes, Tina grinning behind him.

“You two getting off, or...?”

“Ah, yes, um, we’re on-” Abernathy realized he hadn’t been told the room number yet, or given a key. Seraphina sighed and told the house elf,“We’re in the luxe ambassador’s suite on the 12th floor.”

There was a soft ‘ding’ as the bellhop set the elevator for level twelve. The couple quietly and patiently waited alongside each other.

After a moment or two, Sera said without turning towards Abernathy, “Generally, I enjoy corn muffins with butter, glazed donuts, and plain bagels. I guess.“

Abernathy turned with vibrant eyes to the beautiful lady next to him and merely said with a smile, “Wonderful.” His entire face lit up with how pleased he was with the fact he got an answer for his previous line of questioning.

~

“I can only pray I am drunk enough to not remember this tomorrow.”

“It wasn’t _so bad,_ Percival,” Tina stated as her date squinted at her with blurry eyes. Tina was practically twirling around Percival.  

He outright refused any more support for his ankle, claiming, “I can at least walk down a hallway by myself.” He heavily leaned on the chair rail molding that lined the hotel halls. His ankle no longer stung. It had swelled into a dull pulsing throb. Nothing a scotch from the mini bar and a mending potion couldn’t fix. If he didn’t feel like a complete idiot about the ankle and cupcakes, he would have smiled like a loon seeing Tina like this. The sugary fruit from her cocktails and the alcohol had finally caught up with her, so Tina was practically flitting around the hallway like an ecstatic woodnymph.

She had already paced up and down the long hallway waiting for him to stop pouting and make it to his room.“So Abernathy knows about your secret sweet tooth.”

Percival staggered forward off the hall corner as he tried to roll his eyes and got dizzy from the motion. He had to place his face against the wall and close his eyes to make the world stop spinning.

“It’s not the end of the world. Abernathy thinks the best of you as director. You liking red velvet doesn’t deter the fact that he respects you.”

Percival just gave an indistinguishable groan as Tina helped him off the wall and towards his room.

“Cheer up. Abernathy might actually bake the auror’s department its own batch of snacks every once in awhile.”

“Mmmmm… maybe. He really should get paid for how many cupcakes he made for the building. The lunch vendors there would sell a kidney to get half as many people addicted to their lousy sinkers.”

“You can probably get the accounting department to put the bill for Abernathy’s ingredients under ‘miscellaneous expenses’ for stake outs.”

“...That could actually work.”

“You think?” Tina said sarcastically as she drew away and let Percy lean against the small wall indent in front of his hotel doorway.

“Despite all the weirdness, it was fun hanging out.”

“I had fun too. Even if I looked like an idiot.”

“You were a trooper, Percy. Have a good night.” Tina gave Percival a quick forehead kiss after he unlocked his door.

Percival could only gape and stand like a lug in front of his room as he watched Tina glide away.

~

“I was serious about taking the bathtub. It’s probably more practical for me to sleep there than the living room since you probably will have diplomats visiting or meetings early in the day. And there are two full bathrooms already.”

“Are you sure?” Seraphina felt compelled to ask. Even for the sake of practicality, it seemed unkind to make him sleep like a hobo in the tub.

“The master-tub is bigger than my own bed. I’ll be fine. If the marble is too hard, I know a softening spell for rocks.”

“Fine. As long as you’re okay with it. Just let me shower in the master bathroom and get ready for bed before you start nesting in there.”  
“Of course.” Abernathy wandered away to explore the other rooms. ‘Well, isn’t that swell. They have a half kitchen!’ Abernathy thought to himself as he traced his hands on the granite table tops that lined the kitchen.

A solemn, deep voice reverberated behind Abernathy, making him almost jump high enough to headbutt the cabinets. “Hello, sir.”

Abernathy turned around to find a sharply dressed butler house elf.

“Can I help you unpack, sir?”

“No, I’m fine with unpacking myself. Thank you, mister...?”

“Blath. Mr. Blath. I am the suite’s butler. I am here to help you with whatever you need, sir.”

“I’m okay for most things,” Abernathy tried to explain, then a thought erupted in his mind. “Actually, if I give you a list, could you pick up some things for me? I will provide the money you need for it.”

”Of course, sir. I’m here to be of service. And even if I can’t fulfill the task myself, the concierge will find the means to do it.”

“Splendid. Let me just find  a piece of paper and a pen.”

“In the table drawers, on either table next to the couch.”

“Thank you.” Abernathy frantically tried to list the specific things he would need for the next morning. Once he was finished, he ripped the paper out of the notepad and handed it to the house elf.

“I hope this isn’t too much trouble. Some of the ingredients are sold at no-maj grocery stores,”  Abernathy muttered as he pulled out some money to hand to the elf.

“It’s nothing, sir. I’m just surprised by the request is all. Everything you want will be in the suite kitchenette by the time you get up.”

“Wonderful. Thank you so much.” Abernathy shook the house elf’s hand with an enthusiasm that could infect the most stoogey of souls. Abernathy was about to turn away to go unpack when an idea flew into his head that stopped him midstep.“I have one more question.”

“Of course, sir, what do you need to know?”

“Do you have an owlery or a floo station open in the hotel?”

“Of course, sir. There’s a pigeon coop on the roof. We use pigeons to take lighter messages to the wizarding mail station.”

“I need to send a letter. Tell Seraphina I’m cashing in a family favor if she asks where I am.” Abernathy ripped a page from the notepad, folded it in his pocket, and made his way towards the elevator with a pep in his step. He practically skipped into the elevator as the doors opened. “The coop on the roof if you don’t mind.”

“Of course, sir.”

Abernathy pulled out the paper and started to write a quick message against the elevator wall.

“Dear Uncle Donnie,

I need some cavalry to deal with people at the conference. Long story short, I’m President Picquery’s date, and we’re officially dating as far as people know. Please come to Boston. You showing up is the only thing big enough to distract people from me and Seraphina."

Love, Thomas Abernathy-Macduff

"P.S. Joe is here too. So you'll have your golfing and drinking great nephews here to be your canaries."

~

As Seraphina used levitation magic to unpack and hang her designer dresses in the suite closet, she contemplated the week ahead of her. “It’s too late to further discuss how we are going to pull off this facade. But we still need to exchange more information to deal with the more sober latecomers tomorrow.” Seraphina sighed and decided she was far too tired to deal with the next day’s figurative storm that night. If she had been drinking coffee instead of gigglewater cocktails, she’d be more than ready, but now she just wanted a hot shower and a soft bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Drugstore cowboy- slang for an aggressive flirt who loiters at public places like drugstores or bars to hit on or entice pretty women.
> 
> Let’s Ankle/just ankle- head out, walk back, return, hit the road etc.
> 
> Bearcat: a lively, spirited woman, possibly with a fiery streak.
> 
> Sinkers-1920s slang for doughnuts.


	3. Scottish Whiskey and Alligator tales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tina pays for her sweet tooth and partying. Seraphina just wants things to run smoothly, Percy and the aurors stuff their faces and Abernathy tries to help in any way he can. (Crap summary)

                The next day, Seraphina rose only an hour later than the impossible time she normally woke up at. Even the most devout clerics would think God would have slept a bit later. Hell, at this hour, the devil himself would need cocaine to slump out of bed. But the world still turned even if everyone was sleeping, and people in her job had to move into the future with it. The world might have kept moving because of gravity; Seraphina kept moving because of her will and coffee and a little bit of spite.  
Every morning, she prayed to whatever god was responsible for coffee beans and gave her eternal gratitude to the house elves for charming her a fresh pot before going to bed themselves. Seraphina made sure to finish at least two cups of coffee in bed on days like this, if only so she could remember where the hell she was and why her childhood familiar Lady Lupa wasn’t there to welcome her into reality.  
By the third cup of coffee, life began to come into focus with specifics of where and when and why. As she stumbled out of bed and took her wand from the nightstand, she cast a levitation spell to bring out her outfit for the day and make her bed.  
                    Despite casting the spell without opening her eyes, the large kingsize bed quickly remade itself into a pristine state. After it finished remaking itself, her favored blue business jacket and pants, gray vest and suede black shoes danced out from the closet and landed on the powder blue duvet on the bed. At this point in her career, her magic at this time of day was as natural an impulse as breathing. Even when she released her grip on her saucer with her coffee, it didn’t fall to the ground; it didn’t even tip to the side. It just floated and continued to move alongside her as if carried by an unseen coffee cart as she made her way to the bathroom.  
           She stretched her arms high to help wake up and rubbed her hand on her neck after hearing a crack from the attempt. As she finally reached the sink’s marble countertop, her eyes started to crack open. The dim bathroom lights were just low enough to see everything, but not enough to sting her very tired eyes. Her coffee cup was reached for and quietly sipped as she observed the wild bedhead she was sporting. She sipped the lovely caramel coffee with care, appreciating the taste and smell of the miraculous concoction. Slowly but surely, the blessed brew started to wash the sandman’s dust away. Her free hand lifted and twirled her wand to summon her morning tools. They arranged themselves, prepped and ready like a surgeon’s table of knives. Her modest makeup and rouge, her toothbrush, already prepped with Colgate gum cream, her combs and her wand gracefully placed at the far end. Further inspection in the mirror revealed the whirlwind knots of her bedhead, and she thought it’d be safer to run her hands through it first before the combs.  
A sudden shift in the reflection startled her. She spun towards the bathtub at the far corner with her wand in hand, casting a protection shield. After a moment or two of waiting for the figurative shoe to drop, she remembered. “Oh yeah, Tom’s in the tub.”  
‘Shit, did I wake him up?’ Seraphina thought to herself as she tiptoed towards the kingsize bathtub. Peering in, Seraphina found what looked to be an amateur contortionist act.  
                Abernathy’s right leg was tucked so far up underneath his chest that his knee almost reached where his collar bone should be if he was sleeping flat... And his left leg was outstretched so far that his foot reached over the tub rim like a nosy garden snake. The weirdest thing was his spine turned on its side, so much so his left shoulder almost touched his right knee. His right arm swung over his side against his back like a police hold, as his left arm supported his neck on top of a pillow. The left side of his face was more or less shoved against the wall of the tub.  
        The awkwardness of Abernathy’s position made Seraphina question whether he was under a forbidden spell or if he’d fallen and broken something. But he looked perfectly at peace, softly snoring in a deep sleep, despite looking like he’d dislocated his hips from his spine.  
Tom was half covered in his comforter, wearing a sleeveless night shirt and short, striped golfer’s pants that looked like they’d seen better days. The horizontal stripes of the well-worn shorts made Tom’s gams look long enough to get him a casting call for the New York City Rockettes.  
“Is he 80% legs?” Seraphina mused as she observed his free foot pushed against the far end of the rim.  
Tom’s pillow was scrunched under his chest and neck; the comforter lined most of the tub like a bird’s nest. Upon closer inspection, he was adorable, and Seraphina had no idea how to process it.  
Tom’s nose was slightly scrunched as he took in deep breaths, his exhale sounding more like a cat’s purr than anything else. His face pushed against the tub resulted in a small, puppyish drool trail from the edge of his lips. It was far cuter than it had any right to be for anyone other than an actual puppy.  
“It’s too early for this,” Seraphina concluded, taking a final sip of her coffee before turning back to her morning routine.  
~  
                  The modest, quaint hotel room was soaked in frosty shadows. You could only make out the vaguest of outlines in the room. The only glimpse of light was a faint yellow glow that peeked between the navy curtains on the far window. Dark wallpaper curled around the room; the soft breaths of the cocooned Auror on the bed were the only things there to prove life.  
           A screaming phone shattered the silence, forcing the slumbering beauty to flail. Tina struggled to free her arms from the swirl of comforters she’d buried herself in. As she lunged towards the phone on the nightstand, she nearly plummeted off the bed, only saved by her reflex to cling to the table. Pushing herself at least partially back onto the bed, Tina groaned. The sudden adrenaline of almost falling and diving for the phone felt as intense as a heart attack. The shrill ringing of the phone made her scramble to reach it, if only to make the earth-shattering noise stop.  
“Wahhat?” Tina murmured into the phone. Her eyes, still heavy as lead, remained unopened.  
“Unlock your door,” a familiar voice demanded.  
“Who is this?” Tina grumbled, vaguely recognizing the voice but unable to place it. Her skull felt like a cavern with vile echoes of sirens still racing through it. She doubted she could pick out her own sister’s voice in a line up right then.  
“Jesus Christ, I am here for the second coming. I brought potions, now unlock your door, Tina.”  
“I don’t care if you’re actually Jesus, it’s too darn early for this. And anyway I’m Jewish, so if you are, give another Jew a break already,” Tina said with moxy, still unable to make out the voice on the phone clearly. All sounds either sounded muffled like she was in a bag of cotton or sharp and hard like iron bars hitting concrete. In any case, she was milliseconds from hanging the phone up and telling the voice to screw off.  
“Unlock your door or I will, Tina.” The speaker’s tone got deeper, either from frustration or to hurt Tina’s aching head less, or both.  
“Good luck with that, then. I nearly died trying to reach the phone, so you’re on your own with the door,” Tina stated, fully ready to hang up.  
          Before she could, the voice told her, “Fine, cover your eyes.” Almost the second the voice finished the statement, the door knob unlocked, and the chain unhooked from its latch. The door swung open, letting in the soft gold light from the hallway as an imposing figure strutted over the threshold.  
Tina could make out the all too familiar salt and pepper haircut and the fashionably styled overcoat anywhere. At least she could for a second, before the sudden rush of light hit her and stung her eyes like lemon juice on a papercut. “Yikes!” Tina’s tiny shriek was more a shrill sound of pain than an outright scream of surprise. She violently shifted away from the door and hid her face in the down pillows and blankets.  
“They really need to get some better locking spells for the normal suites. Might as well have a string lock of children’s twine on the door,” Percival stated in his normal, dry tone, closing the door behind him. He walked towards Tina’s bed and placed his illuminated wand on the table.  
             Tina tried to turn back towards the now closed door, but even the soft glow of Percy’s lumos wand almost burned her tired eyes. “What the hell, Percy? Turn off the sun.” Tina’s voice cracked as she jolted away from the brightness of the lumos spell emitting from Percy’s wand. She turned completely around and struggled to get back under the comforter.  
         Percival giggled as she shimmied into the blankets. Tina’s lovely Amazon dress and the bland brownish-beige comforter were a lovely contrast in the candlelight. She looked like a Caravaggio painting of a butterfly-winged nymph in a shepherd’s shawl. Percival was half tempted to keep this mental image in his Pensieve for the artistic aesthetic and amusement.  
“Tina, it’s 6:30 AM. The sun isn’t fully up yet. This is my wand, and you are just hungover…” As Percival paused for a moment, he lowered the severity of the lumos spell out of courtesy before continuing. “Actually, given how late you drank those daiquiris last night, you might still be a little sauced,” Percival explained as he walked around to the other side of the bed, where Tina was now facing. A hint of a smirk curled at the corner of his mouth. Tina reminded him of his family’s cat, Luna. She loathed being woken up and would dig her claws into Percy’s back when the maid opened the curtains to wake him up.  
“How many daiquiris did you even have, Tina? I might have to bring more hangover potions for you later,” Percival asked, as he sat down on the edge of the bed.  
       Tina’s puckered shut eyes only now started to open, barely lifting to avoid the soft sting of Percival’s wand.  
“Maybe six, probably closer to seven.” Tina’s shaky tone made it clear she only remembered drinking that many, but how many she’d actually drunk was anyone’s guess. (Except maybe the bartender’s, but that was unlikely).  
“No wonder you feel like death warmed over. Let me guess, you drank it like beer without a straw the entire night.”  
“Yeah, the silly straws were weird and had illusions of flowers or hummingbirds floating around the rim of the drink so I took them out.”  
“Well, you shouldn’t have. Those stupid straws also slow you down so you don’t chug the strong coffin polish booze the fruit is covering up. You might as well have drunk three full bottles of Firewhiskey last night.  
“Why the hell didn’t the bartender tell me that? He saw me chuck the straw out when he served me. A no-maj gun dealer tells you how to work the safety for a new handgun, why shouldn't a bartender tell you how to not get alcohol poisoning?"  
At Tina’s statement, Percival arched one of his infamous eyebrows before leaning over to ask, "Porpentina, when exactly did you go to a gun vendor?"  
"Undercover?" Tina’s voice squeaked a pitch higher as she finished the single word excuse.  
"Tina, I assigned you all your undercover missions."  
           “Percy, I feel like my brain is rotting. Can you please interrogate me about this when it’s not?” Tina whined, as she looked up to Percival.  
“Fine, but only because I think questioning you now falls under inhumane torture tactics in the Auror by-laws. So, Tina, you up for a jog before the meeting in an hour?” Percival snarked in a voice way too upbeat and amused for 6:30 in the morning after a night of drinking.  
“Let me die in peace, Percival,” Tina grumpily replied as she twisted back into the comfortable entrapment of blankets.  
   “I would never. But if you insist, I guess I’ll drink the rest of this hangover potion for myself and this big bottle of water to wash it down.”  
     “Nooooooooo,” Tina softly pleaded like a child as one arm got free and caught Percy’s jacket as he was trying to stand up.  
Percival looked down to see Tina’s pouting pink lips and slightly bloodshot cassiterite eyes. Percy knew he shouldn’t chuckle at Tina’s antics and condition, but he just couldn’t help it. She was adorable, which was weird given how most people looked like roadkill when they were this hungover. Rum daiquiris could put a seasoned pirate flat off their rocker. Tina had had six throughout the night; it was a miracle she wasn’t in the hospital. Percival sat back down on the bed and leaned over with the water and potion vial.  
      “All right, all right. Enough with the cute pouting and come here.” Percival scooped Tina up, blanket and all, and placed her half on his lap as they leaned upright against the headboard. “Drink some of the water first so you can wake up a little. Then, sip the potion slowly. I am in no mood to go to the apothecary to get another one if you upchuck this one.”  
“Mkay,” Tina mumbled, too tired to question why she was leaning back against her boss on her bed.  
           Percy just stayed quiet as he watched Tina handle the water and potion. He might be snarky, but it felt mean to keep prodding Tina when she was this hungover. Tina could barely get a grip on the potion bottle; she had to use both hands to tilt it back to drink. Percival thought it oddly charming.  
“I’m starting to feel less dead. But I doubt I can go to the meeting today.”  
“Well, technically, you aren’t required to go, since you are here as my date and not on the assignment.”  
        Tina turned her head slightly to glare at him. Her eyes squinted as if he had just told her she was promoted to Assistant Director of the Wands Department, a little bit of confusion and the sentiment of ‘how dare you’.“You woke me up for nothing. You bastard.”  
“I woke you up to give you potions so you won’t feel like your head imploded when the maid comes to clean the room at noon. At least now you will be able to catch up on your late reports.”  
“You’re so annoyingly practical,” Tina said with a pout, turning her head towards Percy.  
         Percival couldn’t help but take the statement as a compliment. And Tina’s pouting and well being were well worth getting up so impossibly early for coffee and potions. He placed Tina comfortably against the headboard as he rose from the bed. Percival calmly explained, “And you’re annoyingly cute when you pout. But anyway, I’ll leave some oranges and a bagel on the table. I’ll take notes at the meeting in case you want to sneak off and work with your peers while I talk boring things with the rich and the boring later.”  
“Thank you.”  
“Try to feel like a person again before noon, Tina.”  
“I will…” Tina answered in an exhausted tone. She paused before asking, “So, Percy, you think I’m cute?”  
“Don’t make me regret this, Tina Goldstein.”  
~  
        Seraphina settled into her place at the head of the dining table, her work papers sprawled around her like an Oriental fan. Then, she heard a knock at the door and a voice from the hall.  
“Tommy boy? You there? The cavalry's here, as you put it. The least you can do is open the door and give me a stiff drink.”  
Before Seraphina could reach the foyer, the house elf butler and Auror Delores were at the door. After the neutralization spell was recast by Delores, to prevent all wand users from casting attack spells, the butler opened the door to reveal a short, very stout, bearded gentleman.

   “Where’s my grand nephew, Mr…” The ginger Scotsman had to squint his eyes to make out the butler’s name tag.“Blath?”  
“You must be Uncle Donnie.”  
        “Madam president- Wait, what am I supposed to call a president dating my godson? I mean… Madam Seraphina?”  
“Either President Picquery or Ms. Picquery is fine, Mr. Macduff. Now, your nephew’s in the tub, but it is not even dawn yet, so you might want to come back later.”  
       “By Jove, did Joe blackout while showering again? That moron should not be left near a body of water with Jack Daniels in his hand.”  
“No, your other nephew, Tom Abernathy.”  
  “Oh boy, what’d he do to be put there? Must have been bad enough that he didn’t deserve the couch,” Donald proclaimed as he made his way to the bar and added some fine Irish cream to a cup of coffee.  
“Honestly, he wanted to sleep there. He thought it’d be rude to hold up the living room if one of my advisors showed up for an early meeting.”  
     “Ah, that sounds more like him. His mother always bragged about her boy having the manners of a prince and the modesty of a clergyman. Pissed off my grandfather, it did. But that’s a story for another day.”  
     “As much as I would like to hear about the Macduff family history, I have to remind you that Abernathy is still unconscious. I’d let you stay, but I have a security meeting here in half an hour.”  
“Eh, best let the lad sleep off last night. I need to check in anyway.”  
“Oooh… I’m sorry, Mr. Macduff. Every room is taken. You might have to floo in for the parties since the hotel is overbooked.“  
“Not to me, they’re not. They’ve had a small room for me here on reserve since it opened, Ms. Picquery. I invented half the charms this place is built on and designed the interior to boot. So I know where this is.” To emphasize his point, he opened a hidden panel behind the bar and pulled out a very dusty amber bottle.“Yup. Thought this could be a welcoming present for long term residents. Shame most of them never got around to finding it.”  
“You’re a clever man. Odd, but clever.”  
“Yup, that’s probably what most people call me. I’ll head out so you can get ready for your meeting. I’ll leave a note with your butler, Blath, to tell Abernathy where to meet me later.”  
“It was lovely meeting you, sir,” Seraphina said as she made her way from the living room bar to the dining and conference room.  
Seraphina managed to finish at least a third of the large stack of general bureaucratic forms that needed her approval to be filed before she heard a “Ma’am” from the doorway.  
“Yes, Mr. Blath?” Seraphina politely responded.  
“Mr. Donnie said the bottle is a gift and told me to brush off the dust and make sure you got it.”  
“It’s a bit early for an Irish coffee, but let’s take a look at what the man squirreled away in the suite.”  
The butler handed her the now dusted bottle of whiskey.  
Seraphina took it and read the label.  
USHER’S/SPECIAL RESERVE/ OLD VATTED GLENLIVET WHISKEY/BLENDED/EDINBURGH/J&G STEWART LTD.-DISTILLERS, EDINBURGH/ESTM 1779/PRODUCED IN SCOTLAND.  
Apparently Macduff’s idea of an “easter egg” present for the guests was a 100 year old single malt whiskey.  
~  
          Almost every inch of the table was covered in papers and ink quills , with a couple no-maj pens and notebooks thrown in. The benefit of having a presidential cabinet and advisors made up of mixed blood wizards and witches with “respectable” old names from Europe had many uses. The recognized names allowed them a decent amount of political respect despite blood elitists, helping her gain a wider range of support, but generally, Seraphina was equally thankful for the more daily practicalities of who they were: fewer arguments about pristine or traditional methods of little things, like using no-maj tools and ideas. As petty as it sounded, it cost so much less aggravation on a day to day basis. It took over forty years after Hansen developed the “modern” typewriter for traditionalists to formally permit wizards and witches to use them in the office, and another twenty years to make them accept it as the standard tool for writing. It would be a special kind of hell to deal with petty pure bloods getting into fights over using pens or quills every day.  
        “Now, Ivan, have you determined the exact year for the plummet in the no-maj world?” Seraphina inquired, barely lifting her eyes from the barrage of papers before her to direct the question at Diviner Ivan.  
“I managed to narrow it down to between two and a half years, Madam President. But the research from the intelligence department about no-maj economics argues that it will come sooner rather than later.”  
“Damn. We just need to move the ‘Saving Squibs’ bill to the next session in the House and Senate if we want to get things in order before the crash. We can’t risk an entire generation of mixed blood children dying because of the no-majs’ reckless economic policies,” Seraphina said, aggravation tinged her words.  
“Have you tried to get the no-maj president to prepare for the disaster?”  
“He’s outright said he will not be running for reelection. He will retire from Washington altogether once his term is over. He’s already pushed huge tax reductions across all classes to lessen the strain on the lower classes. His peers are so damn optimistic about prosperity that he can’t push for regulations on political practices without looking like a lunatic.”  
       “Hopefully, the next guy will be like Cooley. I doubt he will be, but we can hope,” Advisor Mulciber stated, shocking everyone into looking up from their notes and at each other, not knowing how to act.  
‘If the cynic Mulciber can hope, the rest of them could at least try to do the same,’ Seraphina thought to herself.  
“The world must really be going to hell, if Mulciber hopes someone will be like Cooley.” Percival’s dry tone practically left dust on the table.  
        Everyone in the room had been cornered by Mulciber at least twice and forced to listen to his rantings about Cooley’s shortcomings. Mulciber, being born to squib parents and having the most exposure to no-maj politics, was arguably the most informed about their situations. Although, he regularly forgot that most of his co-workers didn’t follow the no-maj political scene as religiously as he did outside of work. So it tended to be less a discussion and more of Mulciber complaining for an hour.  
“It’s a bit warm in here, isn’t it?” Agent Thompson stated as he took off his thin outer jacket and loosened his high shirt collar.  
With a flick of his hand, Percival opened the modest French doors of the dining room behind President Picquery. Once the doorway was opened, a breeze of buttery sweetness wafted through the rooms.  
“Oh God, whatever the hell that is,it smells divine,” Percival said with a hint of awe. His growling stomach spoke louder than his voice.  
      “I didn’t know you’d gotten a caterer for our meetings, Ms. Picquery,” giggled Auror Delores.  
“I didn’t. I just ordered the three large pots of coffee.” Seraphina turned to her left to ask if Percival had ordered room service for the meeting. His chair was already completely empty.  
“Mercy Lewis,” Percival rasped from the living room, staring off into the room opposite the suite.  
Seraphina sighed. “Everyone wait one moment while I check on Percival. He might still be a little sauced from last night’s festivities.” Seraphina elegantly rose out of her chair at the dining table and walked out to find Percy leaning against one of the foyer’s decorative Roman pillars with a dumbstruck expression.

      Seraphina elegantly rose out of her chair at the dining table and walked out to find Percy leaning against one of the foyer’s decorative Roman pillars with a dumbstruck expression.  
“Percival, pull yourself together. I swear to God, if you’ve served yourself Irish coffee already...”  
“Peanut, look.” Percival shuffled away from the pillar and gestured to the room opposite the boardroom.  
Seraphina had assumed it was a private office or something, so she did not expect to walk into what smelled like a thriving bakery with Abernathy in a smock in the middle of the room. Percival would have snickered at his friend’s cow-eyed expression of surprise if he wasn’t busy. His mind was scrambling to remember how much the expansion spells for his snack pockets could hold while trying to not actually start drooling over the homemade baked goods.  
            Tom turned away from the oven, clapping some dust from his mitts after placing the new batch of muffins in. Once he looked up, he saw Percival in the doorway with the expression of a starving man staring at a feast, and Seraphina wide-eyed in shock, and a couple of snooping Aurors hiding behind her, trying to look over to see what was happening.

“...Hi… I made corn muffins for everybody,” Tom announced in a skittish voice as he grabbed one of the bowls to finish mixing. There were almost three dozen pale blue boxes of cornbread mix spewed across the counters. Any horizontal surface that wasn’t buried under the boxes was covered in cupcake trays cooling with giant, plump corn muffins. Tom could barely look up, embarrassed by the mess and the sheer volume of corn muffins he’d baked. “I might have gone overboard.”  
Tom turned slightly to his left, nodding towards the now stocked pantries and fridge.

“I also have milk, butter and some glazed donuts and warmed bagels from a bakery in the bread box.”  
Seraphina said, “Well, um, thank you, Thomas.”  
Various other questions were murmured from the foyer.  
“Who the hell is Thomas? I thought that was Abernathy.”  
“Is that the wand permits guy, or does he have a twin?”  
“Wait, Abernathy isn’t his first name?”  
Tom politely ignored the awkward gawking, put down the batter, and took out his wand from his apron smock pocket.

      “Give me a minute, I’ll have a couple trays of everything for you guys to snack on.”  
As Tom spoke, all the kitchen cabinets opened. The serving trays unpacked themselves, swooped over the heads of the Aurors, and softly landed on the mahogany dining table in the conference/dining room. And then, with another swish of his wand, all the corn muffins on the cooling rack rose and followed like groups of school children in lines of two into the dining room, landing on the trays in simple pyramid formations.  
Percival used his wandless magic to grab a stray low-floating one without the Aurors seeing. All of them were too busy rushing back into the conference room.  
The director nearly let out a groan of content when he bit into the still warm muffin while he hid behind one of the pillars. Not long after, tableware and jams and plates of melting butter followed suit and landed gracefully around the buffet of breakfast muffins and warmed bagels.  
As Abernathy set up the feast on the conference table, the Aurors raced back to their seats to move their papers and notes into their laps, half out of politeness to make room for the feast Abernathy made for them, and half hoping they could store more on their plate without risking jam stains on their files.  
            Most of the Aurors barely waited for the entire meal to settle on the table and merely used their wands or wandless magic to whisk some muffins and jams towards them.  
          “Oh my God, this tastes almost as good as sex feels,” Auror Thompson said, crumbs of his still hot corn muffin falling out of his mouth as he talked around his bites.  
“What he said” was heard around the dining room table, in various tones and excited mumblings.  
“Thank you?" Abernathy said from the doorway to the conference room, not knowing how exactly to receive such an odd and unnerving compliment.  
The Aurors attacked the spread, filling the room with indistinguishable groaning and “mmmm” sounds as they filled their plates. Abernathy walked towards Seraphina, seated at the head of the table to say goodbye and ask if they needed anything else before he left. He couldn’t help but smirk at their collective reactions to a hot meal.  
            Seraphina turned from her plate and papers to look up at Abernathy at her side. She quietly commented, “These are amazing, Thomas. Thank you for making all this.” Seraphina quickly shifted her gaze away from Abernathy back to her papers to make room for the filling table. Abernathy’s small smirk was adorable and to grin like a loon while complimenting someone was a not very dignified reaction.

  
“Thanks so much. I’m happy to help,” Abernathy shyly said as he rubbed the back of his neck. He always liked to feel useful, but he never got used to people complimenting his work. His generic features and old-fashioned work ethic usually let him fade in people’s memories, so people rarely got around to thanking him. Except maybe a couple of families he’d helped when he was a rookie Auror and later as a law clerk.  
      “Mr. Abernathy, do you plan to bake more tomorrow?” Percival asked, restraining himself a smidge by not consuming his overpacked plate before the meeting started. His plate was so overloaded with halved corn muffins with various jams spread in the middle, droplets of jam and butter leaked off the corners of his plate.  
“Can you bake for us forever?" Auror Thompson asked as cornbread crumbles fell from his mouth, still chewing a large bite of the crispy golden bread. Auror Thompson was never really one for iron-clad impulse control. Thompson’s idea of spell accuracy was that of a low-grade Chicago mobster: keep shooting until you hit what you were supposed to.  
    “Mr. Abernathy,” a monotone voice softly whispered from behind Abernathy.  
Abernathy turned his head around as he felt a tug on his apron. He looked down to find Mr. Blath. He hadn’t even heard him in the suite when he woke up.  
“Sir, there are thirty individual requests at the front desk for you,” Mr. Blath calmly stated, looking up at Mr. Abernathy before he walked out of the conference room.  
“Did something happen, Thomas?” Seraphina inquired. She had expected Abernathy to attract some attention since showing up at the party with her last night, but thirty people messaging for him not even a day later was a bit overkill.  
“Don’t worry, Ms. Seraphina, most of those are just gossips and some of the older generation wanting to ‘welcome me back to polite society’. It’s gonna take me a while to answer them all, so I’ll just finish the last batch and leave you to your powwow. Enjoy the food everyone." And like that, Abernathy spun around on the balls of his feet effortlessly and made for the door.  
            The odd movement performed so fluidly reminded Seraphina of those no-maj clocks with people who dance or clap every other hour.  
Before Seraphina could use magic to grab a corn muffin and the butter tray from Thompson, Percival leaned towards her to ask, “Can we eat a little first and then get down to business?” Percival’s voice almost quivered in pitch as he asked. He almost sounded like an unfed dog that couldn’t stop shaking due to

Percival leaned towards her to ask, “Can we eat a little first and then get down to business?” Percival’s voice almost quivered in pitch as he asked. He almost sounded like an unfed dog that couldn’t stop shaking due to bone-deep hunger and excitement.  
            Seraphina was a breath away from arguing how they should work as they eat, but the statement died in her throat as her stomach roared in protest.  
Percival knew he’d won from how Seraphina avoided eye contact as her stomach rumbled. Seraphina merely sighed and relented to the general hunger of the group, and said in a stolid tone, “Fine. Food first, then in ten minutes we start working as we eat.”  
        The entire team knew they couldn’t exactly yell “hurray” like a group of school children being told they could get ice cream. But each of them smirked or crooned or said hurray internally as they packed their plates with muffins and warmed bagels. All that could be heard for almost twenty minutes were the shuffling of papers, the clinking of butter knives and forks, loud chewing and the occasional comment about how impossibly good the cornbread was. Percy slyly managed to swipe a corn muffin into his infinite jacket pocket every once in awhile when no one looking.  
            Once a third of the large feast of baked goods were all but inhaled by the team, and most of them whined about eating too much too fast, they eventually got around to working.

      “Do you see any dangers in the immediate future, Ivan?” Seraphina leaned forward as she asked, resting her chin on her clasped fingers, careful to not let her elbows lean down on her half emptied plate.  
“Sadly, I can’t say for sure. It’s like seeing through murky water due to the charms people are carrying. I could see people huddled in groups and some young wizards demanding everyone’s attention. But I would likely need to do individual predictions for the high risk guests to clarify any specific dangers,” Ivan explained as he tried to carefully eat a muffin without getting crumbs in his beard again.  
“That description of the party could be anything from some greenhorn demanding support for his cause to a political takeover,” Percival snarked, barely raising his eyes from the list of potential dangers to the charity events for the rest of the week.  
           Most of the elite circles coveted privacy and respectability above all else. The less was known about the people of your family, the better. Rich people wanted their names in the papers and on the lips of every guest in town, like a visiting wind, or temperamental archetype in an opera. Wealthy people’s family names were as solid as the Earth itself; they were here to stay, so even if they let their “black sheep” run wild, they knew they trained them enough to keep their mouths shut and their names safe. Percival knew that without a doubt, it’d take at least six months to get a third of the guests to assent to a proper divination session. However, Percy’s “rich boy” privileged blind spot made him assume Ivan knew this universal truth.  
Ivan was a second generation Russian immigrant from a modest wizarding family; he couldn’t read the hieroglyphic “language” of the elite. It’s not just who your family is, everything is a reflection of you or your status. Everything from what you sound like, to how you know people, how your family got money, how your family rose to power, down to the type of flower you could wear in your lapel or the fact you merely used a spell to braid your hair instead of having a servant do it. And to an extent, most elite circle have internalized the “hieroglyphics” to the point it literally shapes behaviors throughout their entire lives and not realize it.  
      “Graves, this soiree has almost five hundred witches and wizards from all corners of the globe with charms and hexes and spells designed to protect them from people spying on them, in real time and in the future,” Ivan all but snarled at Percival, his jaw clenching around his words like chains holding back a rabid tiger.  
       “You call yourself a master diviner. Act like it. Are you telling me you don’t know a couple enhancement spells to further your abilities to surpass the protection wards of dozens of charmed trinkets? I can name five off the top of my head that are still legal,” Percival argued, trying to retain a professional calm as he tried to figure out Ivan’s reasons for such an impossible suggestion as individual predictions for such a private circle of people.  
“I have a thing called ethics. You might have had some too, at some point. Unlike you, I actually had to work to get what I want. And I’ve had peers who have used those cockamamie spells and lost their damn minds in the process,” Ivan all but growled, his teeth clenching the words and the unspoken swears like a bear trap. The Auror next to Ivan could hear the wood of Ivan’s chair handles scream under the strain of his grasp.  
      “Oh, get off your high horse,” Percival barked, slamming his fist against the table, the shock shuffling the papers around him. He forced himself to calm down for a second while maintaining his glare,then continued, “One of the most powerful wizards of the millennia is on the loose, Diviner Ivan. If there ever was a time to resort to dark magic, if only for a moment, it’s now. That mad man endangers the no-maj and wizarding worlds for hell’s sake.”  
“Don’t talk to me about ethics and dark magic. You might have survived the stranglehold of one dark wizard, but I had to grow up with dozens of people like him. So, unlike you, I understand the glories and the dangers of using magic their way. And even if I did use it to subdue the charms at the party, it would only put everyone more at risk. And I doubt your s grey rear-end couldn’t even make out if you’re in the ballroom or some hut in Ohio if you tried to see what’s gonna happen tonight, even if you amplify your abilities,” Ivan spat. He almost trembled with aggravation; you could count his heartbeats by watching the vein on the side of his head throb.  
“My limitations in my natural seer skills don’t make your prediction any more useful, Diviner Ivan.” Percival’s tone while stating the barbed wired version of truth was so dry, it clung like a sand storm in the air. Percival tilted his reading glasses down slightly to emphasize his judgement.  
“Your sarcasm doesn’t make seeing the future in the ballroom any fucking easier, director.”  
“We will just boost the Auror presence in the main ballrooms and on the executive floors to be safe. Graves, no more comments from you,” Seraphina declared before Percival could snap at Ivan and start another round of pointless bickering.  
~  
           Abernathy helped the butler quickly clean the kitchen he’d turned into a bakery before settling down in the living room to read the stack of letters and good wishes from his peers.  
“Now, let’s see which gossip mongers, ambitious gentlemen, and debutantes are blowing smoke looking for a scoop.”  
Sure enough, the likely suspects Abernathy remembered from his youth were all there. He shuffled the stack so that he could deal with the more aggressive senders first.  
       First on the list was his cousin James. On the surface, James was just asking if he could go visit Great Uncle Donnie with Abernathy the next time he visited because James’s mother didn’t want him to go alone for some reason. The real reason James asked was that Uncle Donnie made sure most of the family didn’t know where the hell he lived most of the year. Mostly because Donnie didn’t want to have to deal with nephews like James looking for a place in his will.  
         Abernathy was one of the few who genuinely liked Uncle Donnie and didn’t care about the family will, so he was always welcome. Abernathy used an enchanted quill to write a response, politely declining James’s request.  
Great Uncle Donnie usually just comes to visit me, and I never know when he’s actually coming, so I’m sad to say I doubt I can bring you for a visit. By the way, congratulations to your mother on getting her product for manicures patented.  
Sincerely, Thomas Abernathy  
            Then there was the meticulous Ms. Murwon, the little old lady with dirt on everyone about nearly everything. Her social and intelligence gathering skills could give any Auror Department in the country a real run for their money. Ms. Murwon wanted the full scoop on Thomas Macduff-Abernathy’s “new lover” and how they’d gotten together.  
Abernathy tried to give the vaguest summary of what he and Seraphina had concocted the previous night. He prayed that was enough dirt to satisfy Ms. Murwon until the end of the week.  
         The stack of others mostly consisted of classmates requesting they have lunch that week, or some kinder, older people congratulating him on finding someone so out of his league in various levels of sincerity and spite. He had his hands free quill fill out a couple dozen copies of a letter saying:  
Dear,  
I’m sorry to inform you that I will be busy this week seeing close family members. I thank you for your offer. Have a lovely day.  
Sincerely,  
Thomas Abernathy  
Abernathy hand wrote the individual names and a couple specific lines of niceties to personalize each a little.  
~  
   Ring ring. Ring ring ring.  
       The phone’s dreadful ringing echoed in the modest double room like a furious police siren, waking the duo from their rest and bringing them into a rapid, heart-clutching, adrenaline rush. The simple motion of pushing away from the comfort of their pillows induced a heart beat so fast the musician Fat Wallace would struggle to keep up.  
         Margaret’s hair spread like an inky curtain around her face. She had to blow some out of the corner of her mouth to groan to her sister, “You get the phone.”  
“You get it, your wand’s closer,” Ophelia mumbled into her supporting arm.  
“You’re closer to the phone,” Margaret complained.  
Ophelia lifted her head, her bangs covering her eyes as she wallowed, and groaned, “The world’s spinning too fast for me to get it.”  
In response, Margaret threw the petite, decorative throw pillow at her sister’s bed. “You can’t see anything, you lazeabout. How can you be my twin and still act like a bratty baby sister?” she complained as she pulled herself up and out of the bedcovers to get to the phone.  
“Because I’m a kid at heart. Now get the phone before the ringing breaks my eardrums,” Ophelia whined as she plopped her head right back onto her pillow.  
      “You shouldn’t have drunk your weight in cocktails, Phe,” Margaret softly tried to scold, too lethargic to be stern.  
“Mmmmmgggghhhh” was the only sound Ophelia made as she groaned into her pillow.  
Margaret turned on the lamp before pushing herself fully up to pick up the phone.  
“Hello, this is Margaret and Ophelia Jonesey’s room, whom might I ask is calling? ...Mhmmm.” Margaret quickly covered the bottom half of the phone as she held it to her chest, and she said softly, “Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph.”  
Ophelia raised her head off the pillow to groan, “ Unless that’s Mother Josephine from St. Rosa’s, I’m assuming things just went to hell.” Ophelia turned to faced Margaret, using a small throw pillow to shade her eyes from the lamp’s light.  
          Margaret kept the ear to the phone and continued to go “hm, hm,” as the speaker on the other end continued her long winded dialogue. “Yes, of course. We’ll both see you then.” A pause and then a continuous stream of small talk from her mother filled her ear. Margaret pressed the phone end against her shoulder to whisper to Ophelia “Mother says she’s coming,” Margaret said in a skittish, mousy tone.  
“Great. Now even John doesn’t want to deal with her baby crazies,” Ophelia stated morosely.  
“John and Diane have been married for less than a year. Can you blame them for not wanting to pop out babies like a candy dispenser? They extended their honeymoon to Finland just so mother couldn’t pop in to ask when she’s going to become a grandmother just because mom hates being an empty nester,” Margaret complained softly as she threw herself back into her spot in bed, phone still in hand. Their mother oblivious to the half attention of her daughter due to her lack of not giving Margaret a moment to reply, just listen. “God, if you’re there, please shoot us now. It’d be a mercy killing,” Ophelia whined, smothering herself in her pillows.  
      “It’s not that bad,” Margaret argued before re-focusing back onto her mother’s voice. Her forced neutral mask dropped as she listened for a couple minutes. Her hands fiddled with the long, coiled phone cord like she was a child playing cat’s cradle with herself.  
“Okay, mother. Okay, okay, okay. Okay, mother. I’ll be sure to tell Ophelia the news. I love you too, goodbye.” Margaret quickly clamped the phone on the receiver before her mother could utter “one last thing” for the third time.  
“Please tell me some distant relative died or something. You look like you just hugged a specter,” Ophelia commented as she rose from her bed.  
In a barely audible voice Margaret said, “She said she’s bringing Mickey. She took him out of Ilvermorny for a couple of days.”  
“Heaven help us, it is that bad,” Ophelia solemnly said as she fell back into bed and screamed into her thick, downy pillow.  
~  
         Percival unlocked Tina’s door with her key this time around. It was a more survivable time in the morning, and he’d brought a more powerful hangover remedy just in case. As he got the key out of his pocket, he saw light leaking out from under Tina’s doorway. He took it as a positive sign, or at least proof that Tina could open her blinds and not flee like a cowardly vampire. He quietly opened the door. “Tina, you would not believe what happened at the meeting.”  
Entering the room, he saw Tina on the floor. He bolted towards her. “Tina, are you okay? Are you hurt?” Percival frantically asked, checking her pulse and casting a spell to check for possible injuries.  
          Tina made a groaning noise in response.  
He took it as a good sign as he helped Tina off the floor. He held her up by her armpits to avoid hurting any possible bruised ribs. Upon closer inspection, Percival didn’t sense any immediate problems, and he couldn’t see anything worth a medic’s attention. But he did observe that she’d managed to get into a soft pair of long pants since he’d left that morning.  
“Mhmm? Why is the world moving? Why am I floating?” Tina asked, perplexed.  
“Tina, I’m holding you up like a cat. You were facedown on the floor when I found you.”  
“Mr. Graves, the hangover got worse. I’m dying. Please leave the things in my desk to Queenie. You can have my snack hoard, though,” Tina whined as Percival finally put Tina down and back on her own two feet.  
He continued as Tina used his shoulder as a balance to get the feeling back in her legs. Percival was patient as Tina tried to steady herself, shifting her weight on what probably felt like rubber legs. Percival chuckled deeply at Tina’s dramatic tone and sincere attempts to stand up straight; she might have looked better, but her hangover was still fighting the good fight.  
“Stop laughing at me, Percy. It’s rude to laugh at someone’s deathbed.”  
“You aren’t on your deathbed, Tina. Now, are you going to tell me how you got on the floor in the middle of the room?”  
“Don’t laugh… I was trying to unzip my dress. I got dizzy trying to see the zipper in the mirror, and I fell.”  
Percival couldn’t help but snort, imagining Tina spinning around the room trying to reach for the long zipper on her back.  
“I said don’t laugh,” Tina tried to sternly state.  
      “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. That’s horrible, and I’m sorry that happened. I’m a little impressed, though. Usually, the drinks at these parties knock even the most willful of lushs off their keister for 36 hours,” Tina whined as Percy helped her sit down on the bed.  
“The yearly joke is that the guest list changes every night because every night half the list doesn’t show up since they’re still nursing hangovers from the night before.”  
           “Mercy Lewis, what do they put in those cocktails? Coffin polish? A Draught of Drought potion?” Tina said as she looked away from the floor and towards Percy. The rapid shift of motion sent her vision swirling and set her off balance. “Percy, please make the world stop spinning.”  
“You should have finished your steak last night. Could’ve helped digest the booze.”  
“Your stomach was growling louder than the lady at our table’s spotted cat. You needed the meat.”  
“That was an ocelot kneazle. And just for future reference, Tina, they never serve enough food at these things. Makes people more likely to talk or go out for food after.”  
“What the hell would be open at 2 AM?” Tina asked as she tried to get comfortable.  
“I don’t know. Most people just follow the jazz guys and cross their fingers.”  
“That sounds reckless. And ow, I feel like my brain’s rotting.”

     “‘Reckless’ is drinking six vodka cocktails in ten hours. Just one of those fruit drinks has more alcohol in it than three mugs of beer. Here’s more of the hangover potion and some water.” Percival summoned the potion and water flask with his free hand. He handed one at a time to Tina.  
“Bless you and your eyebrows,” Tina murmured as she took a swig of the potion.  
Percival was still snickering; he felt bad about it, but honestly, he wanted to frame the image of Tina’s bed head for his mantle, it was so amazing.  
After Tina took a swig of the potion and washed it down with some water, she slightly turned away from Percival, pointed to the zipper, and asked, “Can you help me with the damn zipper in a minute? I want to get out of this dress and into a normal shirt.”  
Percival was slightly dumbstruck for a moment because of two things. One, her undergarments matched the dress perfectly. The back of her bra was made of the same transparent lavender as the cloth on her shoulders. And two, just how far Tina had managed to pull it down and expose the soft, smooth curve of her shoulders and back.  
        When Percival didn’t immediately respond, Tina asked again, thinking her voice was too soft or he was lost in thought. “Percival?”  
“What, Tina?” Percival meekly responded, trying to make sure he pulled the zipper properly without ripping the lovely, lacy dress or Tina’s hair, while at the same time not ogling the soft lines and pale skin of Tina’s body. He hadn’t felt this befuddled and flustered since the first time he had undressed a lady. Oddly enough, he felt even more perverse and ashamed about this innocent act to help his friend than he did when bedding an upperclassman at fifteen.  
“You smell delicious, you traitor.”  
“Pffft, what?” The seriousness of Tina’s tone made the absurd observation hilarious. “Don’t I always smell delicious?” Percival quipped impishly.  
“You normally smell like black coffee, cologne and army soap. Now you smell like delicious food.”  
“We should use your nose for the drug raids; you’d probably find a dozen loaves of cocaine in the ceiling we’d have missed,” Percival stated as he finished unzipping the dress.  
“Percy, you traitor. You got snacks without me. You scrooge," Tina said as she turned around, holding her dress up in front.  
“Who said I came here empty handed, Tina? Now, go get clothes on in the bathroom, and I’ll pick through my snack pockets for you.”  
~

           “Why don’t we just pelt golf balls off the roof like no-majs? This is kinda overkill, expanding a room into a golf course,” Joe whined as he helped cast the terrain-altering spell to create lush fields of emerald green grass. He aimed his big puppy eyes at his uncle, but the distance made the standard tactic of whining even less effective than it normally would be.  
And Abernathy was having none of Joe’s whining about getting all the details right. Joe loved his cousin, but Tomtom had the sense of guilt of a Franciscan monk and the work ethic of a Protestant preacher. There was no room for anything less than meticulous dedication when Uncle Donnie handed them this new project.  
        “Because the cold hurts my bones, and because I already paid the damn concierge to let us do this. I left my own personal Eden and hauled my old keister all the way to the States to help your cousin. The least you can do is let me golf a bit. I’m old, I can’t do much else. Now, head off towards the far inner wall to get the details right while I deal with the center charm over here!” Uncle Donald exclaimed as he pointed in the general direction with his nine iron towards where Joe should go.  
       “Fair enough, uncle.” Joe receded as he walked towards the far end of the unfinished room with his wand out. His vagabond aesthetic and lag-about whining would make most people assume Joe was a good for nothing bum, when in terms of art and creation he was anything but. He merely was more persnickety for what he did with his abilities than most people, called it selective participation. In any case, as he paced around the white canvas of the expanded room, his years of mastering transformation spells allowed him to paint the textures of the carpeted grass over the horizon line like an Impressionist painter. Uncle Donald might have been the genius with charms and Abernathy the hellion of the dueling stage and a devil with details, but Joseph Macduff was unmatched in his domain of artistic manipulation, whether it was transforming stone into plants or untouched skin into a living canvas.  
         

     As Donald fidgeted with aligning the rune patterns of the center charm on the ground, he turned slightly to tell his other nephew, “Abernathy, double check the charms for the outline of the golf course. I don’t want to finish with the expansion charm and find a black hole in the corner mucking up the putting range.”  
“Yes, uncle…” Abernathy softly said as he raced towards the far “wall” of the charm, down into the sand pit Joe had just finished.

“The charms are working. There will be at least three different regions for the holes, and they will change to new ones after we beat the third,” Abernathy explained, his eyes a little distant as he made his way back from the corner of the sand trap where the enchantments for the room were hidden.

     As Joe turned to his cousin, he inquired,“What’s with the face, Tomtom- I mean, Abernathy?” He helped pull Abernathy up from the steep dip of the obstacle. Joe continued his line of thought. “Wait, can I just call you Tom? It’s weird calling you by Ma’s last name.”  
“Yeah, you guys can just call me Tom. Just no more of the ‘Tomtom’ stuff, okay?”  
“Okay, Tommy boy. You’re making your ‘I have an idea’ face. So, care to give us your two cents?”  
“...Why not make it bigger and let some of the younger guests hang out in the fields? We can’t be on every single golfing spot all at once, and they’re stuck inside too. I know I hated it when we had to come to these things as kids, and we got stuck in the hotel room all stir-crazy.” As Abernathy spoke, he thoroughly wiped off all the sand from his shirt as he walked out of the magic-made sand trap.  
“Tommy boy, always thinking of the kids. I knew I liked you for a reason.” Uncle Donnie forcefully patted his grand-nephew on his back. The force from Donnie’s hand hit the back of Thomas’s jacket like an old throw rug, effectively whacking the dust and sand out of his jacket and shirt.  
“Why do you like me, Uncle Donnie?” Joe quipped with his signature shit eating grin that he’d worn on every bar crawl he’d ever been on.

      Uncle Donnie slowed down a smidge as he turned back to say, “Joseph, you can hold your whiskey like your grandma and still argue the bark off a tree.”  
“Awwww, well Grandma did love her whiskey in teacups,” Abernathy softly stated, remembering the few tea parties of high society he had gone to with his grandma. He could still hear the twisting metal clink of his grandma’s metal and ivory flask in her pocket book before she’d poured it into the tea cup on her lap when the other ladies weren’t looking.  
        Donald’s gravely voice oddly complemented his jolly tone as he continued the sentimental comments about his nephew Joseph. “I like you ‘cause you can make Scottish tea with the right amount of lemon and whiskey. That, and you ain’t anything like most of my other nephews, like James. I love him as I should, but that doesn’t mean I want to see that leech anytime soon, and tell him I have no intention of dying in the near future when he asks about my health.”  
“Don’t get all soft on me, Uncle Donnie.” Joe playfully hit his uncle’s arm.  
“I doubt you will call me sentimental when I beat your golf clubs to hell out on the course.”  
“Eh, that’s what repair spells are for.”  
         Abernathy sighed at his cousin’s nonchalance about their uncle having a rage fit with a tree. “Please don’t attack a tree with them, uncle. Your blood pressure’s still horrible, and your nurse will hunt me and Joe down like deer if you black out with us.”  
“My nurse Zarphia knows Merlin himself couldn’t stop me from making an arse out of myself. I wouldn’t have hired her if she didn’t. If I wanted a woman to stalk my friends and give me hell, I’d have married that damn Undine woman a century back. That woman makes Lucifer look like a Girl Scout. I pray for that Jonesey bastard that wound up marrying her. Now, if you boys don’t mind, I’m going to try to haul my old ass over this hill so I can tee off for the first hole,” Donald gruffed as he hauled his golf bag over his shoulder and ambled up the mounds rather quickly despite his age and weight.  
“Uncle, Undine is Margaret’s daughter,” Joseph tried to explain.

      Uncle Donnie barely kept track of the names of their own clan. His brain was like a bear trap; he remembered who you were as a person, your face, even the style of magic you used and your favorite author, but by God he had given up trying to keep track of who was whose daughter and who was whose godchild decades ago.  
“Then you are a lucky bastard to have got out when you did,” Donnie muttered as he placed his ball on the tee and swung his club. “Nice to know age hasn’t touched my golf skills yet.”  
Abernathy took to the tee off spot next, and placed his ball down as Joseph explained to Donnie. 

“Margaret got her good looks, but none of her… passions. At least when I knew her, but I think she got her own claws I need to watch out for now.”  
Abernathy turned to his cousin and uncle after setting his ball down, his voice tight with frustration. “All right, enough of that.” Then he turned back to channel his anxieties about the week ahead into his practice swings before teeing off. His golf club swung down with enough momentum to make Babe Ruth a little jealous.

        After Abernathy switched with Joseph on the sideline he complained to his uncle, “You’d think they were the Furies themselves the way Joe hightailed it when they spotted him last night.” Abernathy couldn’t help but drift his gaze towards his cousin, as Joe did a couple practice swings before having a go at hitting the ball. He couldn’t help but judge his cousin a little for his impolite behavior towards a lady and her mother. At least he knew Uncle Donnie had a bad history with Undine, but Joe was being almost spiteful to this Margaret girl.  
       “That’s because he’s got common sense and the basic instincts to run if spotted by a natural predator.”  
       “Now you two are just being outright mean, guys,” Abernathy remarked, scrunching his nose. He never did care for malicious gossip. Even if the stuffs were completely true, it was unkind and dishonest to say them behind the person’s back.  
Joe’s jaw clenched, his standard smirk curving his lip warped into a harsh line. The expression looked so unnatural when conveyed by Joe’s features. It almost made him almost unrecognizable. “Abernathy, you don’t know the malarky they tried to pull on me.”  
          “I live in a castle on a giant rock on a different continent, and I heard about it before you did, Tom,” Uncle Donald gruffly said as he picked up speed, as if he could outrun the conversation like he did Undine before she’d become Mrs. Jonesey.  
“I don’t take stock in gossip and rumors,” Abernathy proudly said as he picked his putter from his bag and walked up to take his stance at the tee.  
As Abernathy straightened his shoulders and gave a practice swing before placing the ball, his cousin leaned over across from him to say, “And that’s why no one tells you shit, Tommy.”  
“Well, that might be. But you guys are still being mean to people you barely know,” Abernathy said as he swung his club at last. He got farther than Joe, but his ball rolled past the hole, unlike Donnie’s.

“Tommy, her daughters are Margaret and Ophelia Jonsey. Mad Marge and Lia, from the art club,” Joe said as they leisurely walked towards the far end of the field. Joe frantically emphasized his statement, his hands moving like he was doing interpretive dance with only his hands. He grabbed his cousin by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes. “That was Mad Marge in the yellow dress last night.” Joe’s eyes were wide and glassy, like he was remembering a million lost scenes from his school years.

       Before Abernathy could react, they heard Donald shout from near the hole. “Come on lads, I want to putt this hole before I need a walker! And I can’t shoot mine until Tommy shoots his.”  
         Joe and Abernathy shouted back, “Coming, uncle!” and quickly sprinted to catch up.  
As they raced to catch up to the elderly athlete, Abernathy puffed, “Mad Marge-” Puff. “-in a dress? I mean-” Puff. “-you told me she started-” Puff. “ -to change after you guys-” Puff. “-graduated and drifted apart.”  
They got to the hole and took a moment to catch their breath.

   “But that was Mad Marge? The girl that nearly got suspended with you three different times? Your old friend group’s hellraiser? No wonder I didn’t recognize her.”  
Abernathy stood still as a no-maj statue as he tried to process the fact that the Mucha Spartan style lady was indeed the Bohemian muckraker that had been Joe’s sweetie at Ilvermorny.  
“Yes. And that’s not the worst part yet, Tommy,” Joseph solemnly spoke as he placed his hands on his knees trying to gasp for air. He was either getting old at 35 or he must have run more trying to flee Marge the previous night than he remembered. As his hangover and pain potions wore off, he felt his age and his bad habits more and more as the day passed. But Abernathy’s quiet contemplation and Joseph’s fish gasps were shattered.

Uncle Donnie’s pitch rose a couple octaves as he barked back at them, “Oh, for Morgana’s sake, lads! Leave the tragic epics in the libraries and studies. I came here to help Abernathy and to have fun seeing my favorite nephews, not ramble about lost loves and petty socialite dramas. You two are young, I ain’t. So let me enjoy this time while I still can.”  
     “Yes, Uncle Donnie,” Joe and Abernathy said in unison. They knew better than to bring it up again and decided to focus on the golf game. They had all week to deal with the various social minefields that were going to be this social season.  
~

       ‘Shit, I’m late,’ Seraphina internally cursed as she heard the clock in the lobby strike one o’clock. An avid lobbyist had run her down in the lobby to talk about possible trade restrictions.  
He had rambled on for at least a solid ten minutes.  
Seraphina hoped he had a lung expansion health ward or he would faint from lack of breathing.  
After almost half an hour, he finally did.  
Seraphina jumped at the chance to say her piece and bolt before he started up again. “Excuse me, I must leave, I am late for an important lunch date. We may try to continue this discussion at some point this week.”  
“I certainly hope so. Have a lovely lunch, Madam President.”  
      Once Seraphina reached the doors, she shifted to her “no-maj glamor”. It was a more humble quality of her general clothes, slightly worn around the edges but well maintained. Whether the witch of the century or president of MACUSA, she was still a black woman walking in a white man’s world. Better to not draw attention by dressing “above her station” in life. Even so, it still didn’t hurt to keep an enchanted knife or two in her sleeves if she got the other kind of wrong attention from no-maj men. In any case, the foul weather and compact population made apparation not an option. Luckily, the restaurant she had made reservations at was a block from the city plaza in front of their hotel. So it wasn’t too miserable to trudge through the swarms of people rushing to get out of the rain.

            The entrance to the restaurant was through the see-me-not-spelled cellar door in the alley next to a no-maj cafe. Magical folk could enter in and out as they pleased, blessed by the see-me-not spell until they walked back onto the main streets.  
The overflowing metal steps, however, would have broken the ankles of a less skilled modern woman in heels. Seraphina couldn’t help but chuckle, reminded of the time that she’d dared Percival to walk up stairs in a pair of four inch kitten heels while wine-drunk. He’d nearly broken his neck thrice in as many minutes, even though they waited until he partially sobered up to try it out.  
     The restaurant was a quaint size for a magically created space, but that only let the patrons have more intimate dinners, rather than the standard feast style meals many witches and wizards had with their families. The owner of the place had gone to the famous no-maj restaurant “La Fermette Marbeuf” in Paris with his no-maj aunt and had fallen in love with the design. He replicated several of the Romantic murals and famous glass ceilings. Oddly enough, none of the flowers bloomed and closed, nor did the women representing the seasons talk or move. The patrons really appreciated the privacy that ensured, as moving portraits were horrible at keeping secrets.

      The hostess all but shot up from behind the booth the second Seraphina’s glamor faded away. It was a miracle the girl’s shoes didn’t catch on fire on the Persian rugs. The young lady’s voice almost squeaked as she welcomed Seraphina. “Madam President, it is an honor to have you here. I will take you to your table; follow me.” The girl twirled and sped away, clearly nervous and trying to not show it.  
Seraphina leisurely followed behind; her standard pace generally left diplomats gasping in her wake, trying to catch her attention. Seraphina took the time to look up to admire the elegant branches almost falling from the stained glass ceiling.  
The hostess wove through white cloth tables. Most of the lunch rush had long gone, leaving the room with a museum-like quality of stillness, except for the clutter of plates being gathered by a clumsy busboy.  
           As they walked, the hostess said with a less hurried tone,“As a treat for the special occasion of your visit, our world class chef Henri has prepared a five course meal for you and your guest.”  
Seraphina knew better than to argue against the generosity. Even minor complaints could easily be blown out of proportion by gossip columns when you held positions of power. As they walked closer to one of the more closed off sections, she saw Abernathy sitting at their table. Once Abernathy saw her, he grinned and waved. A bit redundant given how empty the place was, but adorably sincere nonetheless.  
The hostess stopped short of entering the mostly closed off section, turning to Seraphina to say, “The first course of salad has been served already, but your second course of either Avgolemono or the chef’s special spiced pumpkin soup will be served shortly with options of wine pairings. The waiter will be here shortly to take your orders.”

“Thank you…” Seraphina paused for a heartbeat to glance down at the girl’s name tag before continuing, “Miss Audrey.”  
    “Pleasure was all mine, Madam President. I hope you and your guest have a lovely evening.” Seraphina didn’t bother with further niceties as she walked past the hostess, even when she heard the soft sound of apparation cast.  
Abernathy rose quickly to pull out Seraphina’s seat and helped her remove her soaked Greatercoat.  
        “I ordered the first course option for the both of us. I hope it was alright,” Abernathy quickly explained as he scurried back to his seat.“The waiter got nervous and kept coming back to refill my water glass, and I panicked and ordered what sounded the better of the two. Garden salad with raspberry and shrivelfig dressings.”  
“That sounds perfect, thank you. Sorry for being so late. I got cornered by a diplomat in the lobby,” Seraphina shyly explained, embarrassed for being so late despite being the one who made the reservations.  
Out of nowhere, the lanky waiter apparated beside the table like an emergency letter carrier.

“Can I get your order for the soups?” the waiter Roanald inquired as he leaned slightly forward over their table.  
     “I’ll have the spiced pumpkin,” Seraphina stated as she looked up at the over-eager waiter.  
“I think I should get the Avgolemono. Spiced things are a coin toss for me. Scottish disposition and all. I can endure a storm from hell, but no-maj peppers can have me running into a lake like my hair’s on fire,” Abernathy meekly confessed as he handed the specials menu to the waiter.  
“I’ll go give the chef your orders now. The maitre d’ and the wine connoisseur will be here to recommend the wine pairings in a moment.” And like a busy mouse, Roanald scurried away.  
“So are you ever gonna tell me the origin?” Seraphina asked before snagging a bite of succulent lettuce dripping with raspberry dressing.  
“Tell you the origin of what?” Abernathy attempted to play dumb and avoid the embarrassing elephant in the room that had walked in since “O’Neil” walked up to them and called him Tomtom. Abernathy avoided eye contact as he cut his salad into smaller pieces. He could feel her unwavering gaze burning as his neck heated from his embarrassed blush. Oh, how he hated how easily he blushed in front of women! Whether at age two or thirty-two, he always turned so red when put in the spotlight that he looked like a bashful cherub on some Italian church wall.  
“The name, the other one you tried to hide from the world,” Seraphina continued her line of inquiry as Abernathy continued stalling. She thought him cute as his blush reached his ears.  
Abernathy anxiously rubbed his neck as he pondered how to reply.

“Ah, that…” Abernathy trailed off and continued stalling by bringing his cup of tea up for a quick sip as he worked up the courage to look her in the eye and tell her his silly backstory.  
“Augh,” Abernathy whined a little as he placed down his tea cup and saucer.  
The sound reminded Seraphina of her familiar when she didn’t give Lady Lupa a nibble of whatever she was eating after work. “Well?” Seraphina inquired, looking across at him and sipping her lemonade.  
         “Fine. When I was really little, like three or four, I talked extremely fast, and I was just really excitable,” Thomas explained as he pushed around his fries on his plate.  
     “Hmmm. I can imagine that, go on.”  
“Well, anyway. I was always ecstatic when my dad came home from work. He worked long hours, so it was always really nice to see him get home before my bedtime. So anyway, if he came home early, I’d get so excited I’d race towards the front door the second I heard dad buzz to get in and wait there to tackle him.”  
      “Hmmmm.” Seraphina continued to drink her tea in intense contemplation, but internally she was gushing over the cute imagery of toddler Abernathy.  
“I’d cling to his legs like moss and say, ‘Daddaddaddaddad, you’reback!’ so fast it sounded like one long word. And my father, who thinks he’s a comedian, would pick me up and toss me in the air and ask me in the same fast tone, ‘Tomtomtomtomtom, whatchado today?’ My mother said it was so cute it nearly made her cry every time she saw this happen. It happened so much, dad just got used to calling me Tomtomtom, because it’d make Mom smile, remembering me welcoming dad home. Eventually, it became Tomtom, but sadly, it stuck with the extended family and followed me through most of my early years at Ilvermorny.”  
        “...That is literally the cutest story I’ve ever heard,” Seraphina said in a gleeful tone through a sincere smile.  
“Yes, well. Thank you for the kind words,” Abernathy said, staring down and grinning at his almost empty salad plate. He glanced up now and then to steal a peek at Seraphina’s glittering eyes.  
“You’re welcome,” Sera said.  
“So uh, do you have any family stories, you know, ‘the family stories’ that I should have heard as ‘your boyfriend’ at this point?”  
Before Seraphina could respond or finish her last bite, the waiter finally decided to show up, using a leviosa spell to carry four wine glasses, the medium bowls of scalding soups and two wine bottles.  
“My parents can spin a yarn like a cat, so there are too many to remember. Luckily, that works in our favor, since no one outside of my family, dead or living, has heard all the stories. So no one is gonna raise an eyebrow if you don’t know about the time I tried to make an alligator chariot, or the time I scared a bunch of no-maj boys by setting lose an illusion toy in the courtyard they were camping in. They all ran home in soiled pants,” Seraphina said in a calm voice as if she’s heard and told the stories a thousand times. She might as well have been describing the weather.

“Noted, but I would very much like to hear those now,” Abernathy gleefully said, stirring his steaming soup to cool it a little.  
“Well, the alligator thing happened because of my godmother’s, well…” Seraphina paused to take a sip of the newly poured red wine.  
Abernathy’s eyes drew down to her lips, the red of the wine darkening her light lipstick to a hypnotizing shade of pink. Abernathy mentally shook himself to look back up and make eye contact when she started talking again.  
“...an odd character. She’s not a blood relation, but she’s family as far as my family is concerned. She used to be a dancer, then a seamstress, and then she raised alligators.” Seraphina shrugged as she explained, somewhat like an older person trying to explain to a child what an eclipse was. “Yeah, sometimes the moon hides the sun for a couple hours or the moon gets stuck in the world’s shadow for a night. No big deal, weird but nothing to tie yourself in knots over.”  
            “How did she go from a seamstress to raising the no-maj equivalent of water dragons? How?” Abernathy asked, wide-eyed and on the edge of his seat like a child seeing their first moving picture show.  
“She fiddled with cheap and odd fabrics and clothes in her spare time. Tested out how uncommon textures reacted to specific stitchings, if no-maj created fabrics reacted to enchanted sewing threads. Things like that.”  
       “Okay, with you so far,” Abernathy explained, his hands on his lap but leaning slightly towards Seraphina across the table. Despite two decades away from high society, the habit of never leaning his elbows on the table at dinner was still ironed into his habits.  
“Well, one day, she got a large bulk of full, untanned alligator skins for pennies due to a huge spike in the alligator numbers in the surrounding swamps.  She had fiddled with a couple spells to prevent stains and moths and the like before, but she never had so much scaley alligator fabric to work with before. Usually, it cost a couple fingers for a stitch of tanned hides in legal magical markets, as they were only sold a few weeks in the early summer. So before, she mainly just used it for accent details on shoes, or texture for belts or sleeve ends. So when she had the full, untanned alligator skin, she realized just how much the textures of the scales were like baby greenback dragons.”  
“Well, they’re both scaled reptiles. I guess there’d be basic similarities in aesthetic textures,” Abernathy replied. He didn’t know how else to respond, since the only dragons he’d seen were from a distance as an Auror, or in books. And the only alligator he’d seen at all was in the zoo.  
           “My godmother mixed and matched a bunch of no-maj and magical tanning techniques on the skins, and eventually, she figured out how to tan the hides to have magical resistance to hexes and spells like baby dragon hide. The extent of the resistance for the enchanted hides wasn’t as effective as adult dragon hides, but still.”  
“That sounds brilliant. Oh, Merlin, it must have taken a lot of patience to try and figure out how to do that.”  
“It took months, but she didn’t tell anyone and got proof if worked effectively and the full lifetime patent for the entire specialized process before saying a word.”  
        “Which was the really smart thing to do. I’ve met more than enough fame hungry second sons willing to swindle good people out of their ideas for a quick buck.” Abernathy’s grip on his fork tightened a bit. Abernathy’s history as a law clerk, he had seen this happen more times then he cares to count. He’s seen immigrants trying to plead for a day in court at the MACUSA law offices for their stolen recipes and inventions, right and morality on their side and yet still fail to get justice. It stung him that he couldn’t help them fight the would-be tycoons who swindled them by doing more than acting as a quasi-translator . The memories hung around the edge of his mind like an ignored mosquito bite as he tried to focus back on Seraphina’s story.

“Alligators being much easier to farm and produce eggs than dragons, she makes a fortune every year selling gloves and jackets to rookie Aurors for training missions and new parents with children who’ve received their first training wand.”  
“She sounds like an interesting person. But how did this lead to you making an alligator chariot?”  
And yet again, the waiter decided to pop up to ask them more questions.  
“How are you doing, Madam President and Mr. A? With the wines and soups?”  
          Whether in press briefings or in a public restaurant, Seraphina had to restrain her tongue from giving a sarcastic comment. Thrown a bit off-kilter with the odd question, Seraphina cooly responded, “I think we’re fine for now?” She turned towards Abernathy across the table, smiling at his attentive grin aimed at her.  
      It took Abernathy a minute to remember he had just said his name was “Mr.A” to the hostess when asking about the reservation when he arrived.

He verbally stumbled a bit as he replied, “Yeah, I’ve got enough… wine and soup. It’s very good soup and wine.” Abernathy tried to shut himself up and stop further embarrassment by gulping a spoonful of his soup, nearly burning his tongue off from not waiting long enough. He quickly downed some water.  
    Seraphina tried to not laugh at the waiter’s befuddled reaction. she failed and a soft snort came out. She tried to hide it with a cough into her napkin.  
      Not knowing what else to do, the waiter tried to ask what they wanted for their main course. Well, Roanald tried to act as professional as he could, given how he felt he was walking through a Three Stooges skit with sound. He nearly bit his tongue to keep from giggling at Abernathy’s expressions.  
“The chef’s special is his famous pulled pork tenderloin and cheddar broccoli risotto with bacon. And as another option, we have a lovely shrimp fettuccine alfredo with a side of smoked lobster.”  
“I’ll have the pulled pork tenderloin,” Seraphina commented, not looking up from Abernathy across the table.  
 “I’ll have the fettuccine alfredo. A friend of mine said the lobster here was great,” Abernathy managed to say, clearly focusing on Sera’s smile and not at the waiter’s toothy smirk.  
          “All right, then. Both are good options. Enjoy the latest course,” the waiter speedily commented before apparating away.  
“So back to the story,” Abernathy gleefully pleaded, literally at the edge of his seat. His face lit up with the similar wonder of a child hearing a new fairy tale for the first time at the feet of a master storyteller.  
The bright cheer of Abernathy’s entire face made Seraphina’s thoughts fly out of her grasp. “So where was I in this story?”  
“Alligators easier to breed, fortune made, Aurors buy them each year.”

“Yes, well. My auntie knew some people would try to steal her patents and her formula for her tanning process. So she built her alligator farm and tanning bed in the large swamp behind her house. She put up enough wards and diversion fields that Merlin himself wouldn’t be able to find his ass with a map if he walked into that swamp.” Seraphina smirked a little as she took a sip of her wine. She could spend a whole day describing the sheer variety of the many random thieves and lost souls she’d found in the swamp as a child.  
     “But it’s a swamp. Wouldn’t people get lost in it anyway?” Abernathy inquired. He’d heard stories of Joe and his friends getting lost in some swamp in New Orleans.  
    “People who live near or around swamps could easily map out the area. If a no-maj hunter reached the farm, it’d be like a fox in a henhouse.”  
“Yikes.”  
“So, in any case, sometimes my godmother would adopt scrawny or skinnier hatchlings as pets. They’re cute and easier to handle then pygmy dragons and dogs, so she house trained them and everything. She even ordered some customized bulbs to simulate sunlight for most rooms. So they were free to roam around the house. I made it a game as a child to find as many as I could without using bait.”  
     “Your parents let you stay with her with alligators walking about?”  
       “Tom, one drawback of being a perfect hunter like an alligator is that they easily grow to be incredibly lazy and spoiled. My godmother spoiled them rotten, fatty foods, cool pools to nap inside, nice places to sleep, she even enchanted them to slow down their growth so they could stay inside longer. She is almost never seen without carrying a newly hatched alligator or one of the smaller Caimans around like a pampered kneazle familiar.”  
       “I’ll have to take your word for it. I’m having a hard time connecting your story with the big dense beast of an alligator I’ve seen in no-maj zoos.”  
“The one you saw was probably twice your age. They grow a foot a year. Which brings me to the chariot. I was a fairly small child, a small single-minded child.”  
“I can see that.”  
        “I was about six when I saw some rerun picture show of a Christmas movie. It had a pretty snow sleigh drawn by horses. I don’t remember why, but I really wanted to ride one. I’d only ridden in cars or floo powder routes before. Most of the people who owned horse drawn carriages in Savannah or New Orleans were either purist rich or middle class white no-majs. Both were people he did not trust as far as he could hex them.”  
“Sounds reasonable, as a parent I mean.”  
“Well, even though I sort of understood why he said no as a child, I wasn’t going to drop the matter completely.”  
“Hmmm.” Abernathy nodded as he sipped more of his delicious soup. His spoon clinked against the sides of the bowl, trying to swipe the last droplets.  
“So when I went to visit my godmother in the summer, I might have ‘borrowed’ my father’s transfiguration books.”

“Oh my gosh, it’s a miracle you didn’t get hurt. I’ve seen transfiguration make even honor students look like lost toddlers.” Abernathy almost snickered imagining a tinier version of Sera transfiguring figurative circles around Ilvermorny upperclassman.

“I focused on more basic reshaping spells. I used a wooden crate from the farm for the base, a couple vines I reinforced with a couple spells after tying them into a circle to make the wheels. And I just used a sticky spell to attach a couple hardy sticks as the axels.”  
            “I’m surprised you could do all this without an adult noticing. But then again, I grew up with so many people and kids, you could be alone in your room and sneeze and at least five people next door would have said bless you. Couldn’t get away with swiping a cookie without at least three witnesses.”  
Seraphina couldn’t help but snicker at the seriousness of Abernathy’s tone saying the word “witnesses”. As if younger Abernathy’s crime was trying to rob a bank without people realizing he was instead of trying to pilfer a cookie.

“My godmother’s home was more….spacious than most. But I was careful about it. I worked on each part separately over a couple a days. My parents didn’t know about my “project” until they saw me in the backyard after I hitched “Old Lug” to the chariot.” Seraphina explained smirking. She could still recall the feeling of triumph when she managed to get “Old Lug” to actually pull her around by using a piece of ham and a fishing pole to lure him forward.  
“O God. Your godmother and parents probably jumped through the roof when they saw what you were doing.”

“My godmother laughed like hell seeing me being drawn around her big backyard. She knew Old Lug was too old and lazy to eat a squirrel without help, might as well me. My parent’s damn near lost their minds though. Dad leviosa’d me out of the moving cart after mom cast a muzzle charm and a sedation spell on my “steed”.”

“You must have kept your parent’s on their toes until you got to Ilvermorny if there are more stories like this one.”  
“Oh I did. But I made them laugh even when I made them turn grey sooner. Dad said “I kept them young at heart that way.” Never a dull moment in my family.”  
“I’m sure there wasn’t.” Abernathy scrambled to think of what else to say without sounding too smitten.

Despite the lull in the conversation, Seraphina was still smiling at him as she sipped her wine. Abernathy decided to go to a safe topic of planning ahead about how to talk with people at the party.  
       So…...Okay. I know the big names of your major supporters. Senator Barkley, Senator Lin, and Senator Rover. Should we exchange like I don’t know, notes about who we can relax with and who we need to “make nice” with for your next campaign?”  
“That is actually a brilliant idea. Given how there are probably crossovers between my supporter list and your family connections. So let’s start from my oldest supporters and go from there.”  
~  
           “Hey, youse two.” The waiter Roanald threw a cleaning rag at the gossiping busboys in the break corner.  
“Sodd off Naldi.” barked Sonny, the smaller angry looking one.“Yeah, we’re talking here.” the two boys squaked back.  
“Well nock it off with the bullsession. I just served the president and her mystery date.”  
“Ya shitting us. How?” the two busboys were almost comedically slack-jawed in disbelief.  
“No, that’s your schtick. That’s how you got this job.”

Roanald snarked as he twirled the chair next to them around so the back could face them. He’s been watching too many no-maj gangster movies and thought he’d look tough sitting the chair the wrong way.  
“And yours is to be an inquisitive dick, in every way. Which is why I’ma ask again, who the fuck let you near someone that important?”  
“Mila’s sick as a dog and Wallace is visiting his ma in Jersey. So technically, I’m the senior waiter.” He bragged, chest slightly puffed as if trying to show off pride and muscles where there were none. Unbeknownst to Roanald, Audrey was at the moment walking up towards him in the proud idiot in his blind spot. “Soooo”

The waiter flinched violently away, scared by the sudden voice next to his neck. Nearly flailing completely out of his chair he was awkwardly sitting in. The trio giggled seeing him almost hurt himself from Audrey, an unarmed gentle soul half his weight and size. Roanald shuffled to reclaim a little dignity as Audrey used wandless magic to summon a small stool to sit next to Roanald.  
Audrey’s eyes glittered as she leaned in to ask, “Are you gonna tell us about the president’s date? I couldn’t get a good look at him because of his striped scarf thing half wrapped around his face when he came in. He did have pretty eyes tho.”  
“Yeah, tell us , was he a dreamboat?”

Sonny sneered as he threw the rag back at Nald. The rag hit Roanald in the face because he was too busy turning and looking down at Audrey hoping to see if she forgot to completely button up her work shirt.  
Vinny interjected in a sincere tone “ Yeah, is he some foreign sheik? A scion of the lost rich king? A famous duelist asking for her hand?” Vinny has been watching too many of his sister’s romance no-maj movies.  
“He kinda just looked like a baby faced bluenose.” Roanald shrugged in his seat as he explained.  
“Dude must have an entire wing of cheddar in the bank to spend on the President’s next election campaign to get a lunch with her.” Roanald quipped as he recalled how the dull guest nearly burned his tongue on avignon soup.

“I don’t think this was a pity lunch. Picquery actually looked sorta embarrassed for being late. If he was just a “thanks for the contribution” bigwig she’d wouldn’t care about being late.” Audrey inputted, remembering the quick step of the president. Her friends always mocked Audrey for running like the devil’s after her when she’s nervous. She has lost a couple restaurant visitors by walking too fast they lost her in the crowd. But Picquery kept up with her step for step, despite the uncomfortably fast pace she almost ran with.  
Sonny replied“Yeah, I think you’re just being mean for sport. You always talk trash about all the pretty girls dates.”  
Roanald almost gasped at the completely true accusation against his character, like all spoiled people do.

“Do not. I just tell it like I’seez it. A bum with a lady so far out his league he’s not even in the same sport.”  
“Well, your bum better get up. I can see the chef waving here. Your break is over and Chef P does not look happy. I’m betting the foods ready and he wants it in front of the president now.”  
“O CRACKERS” Roanald wailed, jumping out of his seat with such momentum it fell forward. He quickly rushed to the kitchen to pick up the main course.


End file.
